


Still Organic

by Medicalnonsense



Category: Daft Punk
Genre: Actual robots AU, Gay Robots, M/M, Robots, Science Fiction, Wires, as if this fandom needs more of them, cables, cords, don't drink and drive kids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-13 05:56:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1215217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medicalnonsense/pseuds/Medicalnonsense
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After an accident the musical duo has to grapple with being humans with inorganic bodies.  Ever logical Thomas seems quite eager to accept their new status in life, Guy-Manuel is less so and requires guidance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

     The two men--installed as regulars at the bar--laughed and carried on together; they downed gin, absinthe and creme de menthe, having a glorious time.  Well, one of them did, his name was Thomas; his partner-in-crime, a man who had to shorten his name to simply Guy-Manuel instead sipped on glass after glass of wine, an expression of overbearing contemptuousness across his features.  The more social of the two, it should be noted was also the one doing the laughing.  He was having a fine time with some nice barfly ladies and Guy-Man was pretty okay with that.  They probably thought they were going to be sleeping with the next biggest music phenomenon of all time that night.  
     Guy-Man snorted to himself.  
 _As if he’s really into that anyway._  He wouldn’t have exactly labeled his best friend as a lothario.  Even the idea of him being sociosexually unrestrictive made the other Frenchman chuckle under his breath a little bit.  Not that Thomas wasn’t charming or anything, Guy-Manuel had just observed over the years that Thomas very rarely had one night stands; it was even more unlikely as Thomas had a girlfriend at the time.  He himself wasn’t particularly interested in them either, but he could say with no small amount of confidence that he had had plenty more than his friend.  
     “Hey there.” A young woman approached him, pulling him out of his inner world of constant thought.  “Can I get a smile?” She questioned and he obliged; she was pretty after all.  More importantly, she was holding two glasses of wine in her hands and it was unlikely they were both for her.  If she had bought him a drink, he could get down with that.  
     At about the same time that Guy-Manuel was going to respond to her, he heard his buddy’s voice.  
     “Hey, Guy!” Turning to face Thomas, Guy-Manuel was surprised to see him already pulling on his leather jacket.  “Let’s bounce.”  
     Thrown for a loop was the best way to describe the younger man’s thought process.  He stood and politely excused himself from his new company before pulling on his coat too and following after Thomas.  
     “How many have you had?” Guy-Man felt it necessary to ask, it was one of the few times the two of them had chosen to drive rather than merely take the public transit.  
     “I’m not driving.” Thomas chuckled, patting his friend on the back.  
     “What!?” Guy-Man made a noise in the back of his throat, “When was it decided that I was going to be driving _your_ car, Thomas?!”  
     “What’re you trippin’ ‘bout?  You’re n- _not_ nearly as wasted as I am.” The taller one laughed, his demeanor betraying to Homem-Christo that he was more hopeful than confident about that.  
     “Be that as it may, I don’t want to be driving right now.”  He was enjoying his buzz, he couldn’t be arsed to break the law, among other things.  
     Looking at his watch, Thomas clicked his tongue, “You’re gonna have’ta, the bussesss all stopped hours ago and we juss’ missed the last train by ‘bout a half hour.”  
     “Or we could, you know, sleep in the car.” Guy-Manuel huffed stubbornly.  It wasn’t that he was questioning his ability to drive in his inebriated state, he just knew he shouldn’t do it.  
     “You juss’ wanta cuddle up with me in the back seat.” Thomas always got very physical when he was drunk and so Guy-Manuel was long used to the way that he would throw his arm around his shoulder and lean on him.  Given that Thomas was a little taller than him also, it was nothing new for him to rest his face in Guy-Manuel’s dark hair.  
     “Tch, as if.  In your back seat?  Do I _look_ like Gumby to you?”  
     “Guuyyyy, drive me hoooome.” Thomas whined a little into Guy-Man’s ear and the shorter man sighed.  
     “Okay, just get off me.” he conceded, shoving the drunk fluffball from his shoulder.  “Where are your keys?”

\----

     That had all happened about three weeks ago by standard time-keeping’s track.  
     As Guy-Manuel came back to consciousness, he was acutely aware of the fact that he felt virtually nothing.  Or he was sure he felt nothing.  There were some things he could tell that he was touching and those things were plastic and metal.  These were not things he was accustomed to taking a nap upon.  Once actually taking the time to assess the materials he was atop of, however, they mysteriously disappeared from his sense, leaving him floating again.  
    _The fuck happened last night?_  Unsettlingly, he saw a bright red question mark in his mind’s eye.  He was pretty sure his eyes were closed but he was also pretty sure he was actually seeing that.  
     Was it possible he was still asleep?  
     “I think he’s awake.”  The voice sounded like Thomas’s, but it was strange and distorted, it reminded him of how they sounded at a show.  Oh, damn it, had he fallen asleep in that damned helmet of his?  Moreover, who was Thomas with around him that required the use of that voice distorting system?  
     At that time, Guy-Manuel began to really feel like something was wrong.  As he tried to find enough sense of his body to open his eyes, he realized that he couldn’t feel his eyes…  Or his eyelids, or his arms, or legs or… Or anything.  He tried to draw in a surprised, panicked breath, but found out he couldn’t do that either.  
    _What the fuck?!_  Guy-Manuel saw the question mark disappear at that point and be replaced with an exclamation point.  
     “Oh, that’s probably not good.” Guy-Man heard Thomas’s voice again.  A fast beeping in the background told him he was likely reacting to some kind of screen readout.  However, as Guy-Man was too busy panicking, he didn’t really spend all that much time thinking about that.  
     “I’m going to have to ask that you remove your patient.” A voice Guy-Man didn’t recognize caught his attention.  “He’s causing him too much distress.”  
      _Patient?  Patient?!  Why is Thomas a patient?!  Am I a patient?!  Hey!  Answer me!  
_      Trying to scream his twenty-questions at him, Guy-Man once more fought his air-bereft, yet not suffocating state and found he could not vocalize his thoughts.  In his head he screamed and thrashed and tried his hardest to make something of himself known and found only the bright red exclamation mark in his view begin to flash.  
     “Mr. Homem-Christo, I’m going to have to give a sedative until you calm down.  This isn’t healthy for your condition.”  He heard the unknown person futz with something on a metal tray.  “Sleep is your best option right now.”  
 _Don’t you fucking give me anything!  I can panic if I want to panic!_  The flashing exclamation point became an X.  
     “A few ccs should do the trick.”  
      _Stop, stop!  Just tell me what the hell is going on!_  The X began to flash.  
     “You really don’t need to give him that.” It was Thomas’s voice again  
     “He’s under-going far too much stress in this state, do you want him to have permanent damage?”  
     “No, of course, not; I’m just saying you don’t need to sedate him…”  Good Thomas, always the voice of reason…  “Does he have feeling anywhere?”  
     “No, we haven’t gotten all of that sorted out yet.”  
      _What? What?! **What**?!_  The X morphed back to a question mark.  
     “At least…. I’ll never be at…...  A loss for what you’re…..  Thinking…  Anymore.” Thomas’s voice came right by where Guy-Manuel would describe as his ear.  The peculiar pauses in his speech aside, it definitely was Thomas’s voice, though different from earlier.  This time, however, he sounded as he were in great pain.  “I know it’s confusing…  I’m in the…  Same boat as you…  Right now.  More or less.  We’re going to be fine.”  
    _What the fuck happened?  What did you mean earlier?  Where am I?  Why doesn’t your voice sound right…?  Thomas fucking say something else!_  Amid his internal screaming, Guy-Manuel had to wonder to which part Thomas meant that “more or less”...  Were they more or less the same or more or less going to be fine?  No matter which was the answer, he didn’t like the potential trade off necessary for either.  
     “I’ll be able to tell you more later.  After they have the rest of your systems online.”  His voice flowed smoothly again, regaining its earlier tinny tone.  
      _Onl…  What?_  Guy-Manuel heard the slightest of beeps in the background amid the slowing, ever-present blip of what he could guess to be an electrocardiogram.  
     “He should be able to feel something on his arm.”  
      _What the fuck are you doing?  
_      “Where?”  
     “Right there.”  
      _Right where?  
_      “Here?”  
     It wasn’t anything incredible, but Guy-Man felt his first real contact with the world he had been floating in.  He felt a pressure on his arm, it was dull and imprecise, but he could definitely tell it was a hand wrapping around his upper arm.  An exclamation point flashed in his view for a moment before disappearing.  
     “Yeah, see, I’m here too.”  
      _Thank God._  For a reason that the invalid man was unable to ascertain, he saw the tiniest of hearts appear before him.  
     Thomas laughed mechanically, “Yeah.  You too.”  
     “His pressure is decreasing…”  A third voice joined, this one a female.  
     “Yes, yes, I can see that.”  
     “See?” Thomas smugly interjected.  
     “Fine.  I’ll have you moved in here in the next few days.”  The first voice Guy-Man didn’t recognize told his friend.  Now that he was a little calmer, it sounded like the voice of an older man.  
     “Few days?  Why not now?”  Thomas sounded agitated, which was not normal.  He was willing to bet that this was something of a hot-button topic for at least a few conversations if not days."  
     “Because we still have much more to construct.  As you can clearly see.”  Hearing a few distant clicks, the touch of Thomas’s hand around his arm faded away.  
 _Construct?!  What happened!  Thomas!?  
_      “If I’m clearly calming him down, wouldn’t it behoove you to let me stay with him?”  
     “When he’ll actually be conscious for an extended period of--”  
     “You’re sending him back to sleep?!” Thomas sounded furious.  
     “Please Mr. Bangalter, don’t try to stand!” The female voice directed firmly.  
     “I’ve been awake for a week, why isn’t--”  
     “Do you realize how much work had to be put into him, compared to you!?”  
     Thomas was silent, Guy-Manuel had never felt more lost in his life.  
     “I’m sorry…  I have just been wanting to talk to him is all.  This is my fault and all.”  
     “I understand.  Give it some more time.” The man explained carefully.  “You’ll be able to talk to him in a few more days.   _Actually_ talk to him.”  He sighed, “Please take him back to his room.  I have a lot more to do today before I go home.”  
     “This is good… Right?” Thomas tentatively asked.  
     “He clearly is conscious.  Yes, this is a very good thing.”  
     Suddenly, Guy-Manuel felt very groggy.  
     “He needs more sleep now though.”  
     Then his world was black again.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

     The tall Frenchman brooded over the prone body of his friend the next day.  He dragged a long, black and silver finger along his unresponsive arm and let out a sigh.  The doctor beside him kept his words to himself and continued to clack away at the computer in front of him.  Thomas lifted his gaze from his friend for a moment to view the screen his physician (or was it technician now?) was so intent upon.  He wasn’t surprised to find that he understood nearly everything that was being done, but it certainly set him on edge.  He had spent the last week educating himself on his and his best friend’s new, respective states.  
     “Jealous?” The doctor questioned.  
     “Why would I be?” Thomas responded with a rasping whisper, nearly choking.  
     “Please, use your vocalizer.  You’ll never get the hang of it if you don’t use it..”  Thomas took Guy-Manuel’s usually preferred route and didn’t respond.  “At any rate, was just filling the silence.”  
     “You don’t do that.  What was your point?” Thomas spoke very carefully and precisely in a mechanized voice.  
     The physician chuckled, entering something more into the computer before turning to the prone form on the “operation” table.  “You’re more vulnerable than he is.”  
      _That’s ironic._  Thomas internally remarked, still unused to his thoughts being displayed in red text over his vision, he needed to figure out how to keep that from happening. “Maybe it’s my turn for once.”  
     “You can still get sick, be asphyxiated, be--”  
     “It’s nothing I have never experienced the threat of before.  I’m grateful for my situation if anything.”  He turned his head again to view Guy-Manuel’s new face; its vicissitude did indeed suit the emotional and introverted man, but it wouldn’t stop Thomas from missing the one he grew up with.  At the same time, he cursed his own luck at how things had ended up; he couldn’t help but feel that their situations should’ve been the reverse.  
     “Hmph.”  The doctor muttered something under his breath, leaning into the chest cavity of the man on the table.  “You always were the more level-headed, Bangalter.”  
     “I guess…  I am.” he muttered with his real voice, much to his own pain.  
     “What did I tell you?”  
     “It’s the way that I spoke all my life…  I have very little sense of how this thing works yet.” He spoke again in his machine-generated voice.  
     “Neuroplasticity is a wonderful thing--you can only use it so well this early because you’ve practiced and your handling of it will only improve.  You’ll eventually stop trying to use your vocal cords all together, hopefully.”  
     A set of question marks scrolled across his vision then, “Hopefully?” he wheezed.  
     “Organic speech causes you pain, doesn’t it?  It’ll never get better, there’s too much scar tissue.”  
     “Do _you_ want to be like us…?”  Thomas suddenly posed to the doctor’s back.  
     He didn’t answer at first, he just kept working.  
     “Jean…”  
     “If by ‘like you’ you mean ‘horribly disfigured’, no.”  The doctor sighed, “Which, for the record, I never thought that my cousin’s own son would be my first subject.  This was definitely not something I would wish upon you.  Or this young man.”  
     “That’s not what I meant.”  
     “Fine, if you were referring to the general helplessness that comes with being a squishy creature being done away with by a superior body…  Perhaps I would more enjoy being a subject of my own research.”  There was a faint crackling noise from inside of Guy-Manuel’s chest.  “Call me sick if you want, it doesn’t change the fact that I saved both of your lives.”  
     “I know.”  
     “Would you be happier if I tuned your vocalizer to sound more like you?”  
     Thomas grew frustrated with talking to him, his insistence upon changing the subject when a touchy one came about irritated him to no end.  As emotional as Guy-Man could get, he was never more grateful for the man’s inherent bluntness after dealing with his cousin once removed.  
     “I suppose so.”

\----

     When the unconscious man finally awoke again, he had trouble sorting out a few things.  One of those things being exactly what had happened last time he had been awake.  Another was if he had really gone back to sleep, why was he so exhausted?  
     “Guy?”  He heard from his peripheral and suddenly he saw everything.  
     It was completely unlike the sensation of opening his eyes and caught him off guard.  The world wasn’t there one second and was back the next.  The bright lights above his head bothered him, certainly, but he soon realized that he had no eyelids to close against the offensive light.  A red exclamation flashed over his view and, unsure of how he did it at all, his environment dimmed.  
     “Can you sit up?”  Thomas’s voice asked again and instead of sitting up, he turned his head smoothly to look at the person sitting next to him…  
     “What are you wearing?” Guy-Manuel verbalized, unsure of exactly how he did it considering he hadn’t inspired any air.  Moreover…  He hadn’t felt his mouth move either and that was pretty weird.  As a giant question mark filtered over his vision, he thought he was going to go into cardiac arrest out of terror.  Which, he probably would have if he had a heart at all, or a traditional one anyway.  He was aware of an erratic beeping noise somewhere to his left, but he chose not to react to it.  
     “Guy, calm down.” Came Thomas’s voice again.  
     “Calm down?!  Do you have any idea what the fuck is going on!?  Because I don’t!  I’m not breathing, but I’m speaking!  I can’t feel myself talk, I can’t feel anything!  Thomas, what happened?!”  And why did his voice sound so weird…?  
     “No, really, stop yelling, I don’t want any of the nurses to know I woke you up.”  The silver robot mask before him instructed, exclamation points scrolling by on its red LED screen.  “I really don’t want the doctor knowing either.”  
     Guy-Manuel was about to yell again, but a strong pressure on his shoulder alerted him to Thomas’s physical proximity.  He turned his head a little, the erratic beeping beginning to slow as he looked at his friend’s black and chrome hand.  Disturbingly unable to take calming breaths, Guy-Manuel focused on his friend’s hand; he focused on its familiar weight and its meaning.  Where he was sure he should’ve been able to feel a rapidly beating heart slowing, he instead felt a progressively calming whirr in his chest.  He would’ve freaked out again if not for Thomas suddenly intensifying his grasp on his shoulder.  
     Where Guy-Man would naturally flick out his tongue to wet his lips, he was very distraught at his lack of a tongue or lips…  The whirring sped up again, but Thomas pushed him back down to the plastic and sterile steel beneath him.  He was calm again.  
     “Thomas…  What happened?” He asked slowly, marveling at and trying to examine where his voice was coming from.  
     “There was an accident.” Thomas explained.  “I would rather you hear this from me than from Jean…  Our doctor, I mean.”  
     Trying to keep calm, Guy-Man pushed up against Thomas’s strong grip.  Slowly, Thomas’s hand slid off his shoulder and clasped with his other between his legs, his modesty presumably preserved by his hospital smock.  Guy-Man had to wonder at why it was ostensibly necessary, however, when Thomas’s arms and legs appeared to be enclosed in what appeared to be black leather sleeves that subtly zipped closed at his wrists to his chrome-plated gloves.  
     Curious at his own body, Thomas allowed him some time to examine himself before continuing to speak.  Guy-Man looked to his hands, finding them curiously similar to Thomas’s, the only real difference being his gloves seemed to be gold-plated instead.  What scared him most, however, was as he flexed and unflexed his fingers, clasping his hands and running them over his arms, he realized he had feeling in all the leather.  The leather itself was soft to the touch and smooth, but as his fingers fell upon a seam, he had to wonder what was underneath it.  Flipping the leather back, he found that at the joint of his wrist, that there was a well-insulated zipper, he undid the slide-lock on the zipper and grasped it.  
     Thomas’s hand suddenly interrupted his investigation, laying atop his softly, “You’re going to want me to explain some things before you do that…”  He warned.  
     “Why are you wearing your helmet?” Guy-Man broached nervously, trying to ignore that he saw a gold and colorful reflection in the chrome of the helmet across from him.  
     “Because, Guy…”  Thomas began, curling his fingers tentatively around his friend’s now unfamiliarly-landscaped hand.  “What’s the last thing you remember?”  
     “The bar.  I drove us home.” Guy-Manuel relayed nervously.  “Why?”  A question mark filtered onto his view of the world.  
     Thomas made a nearly silent, wheezing chuckle.  
     “What’s so funny?”  The question mark disappeared then reappeared.  
     “For once your emotions are actually on your sleeve.” Thomas explained.  “Or, on your face, rather.”  
     “What?”  The question mark again.  “What’s wrong with my face?”  Lifting a hand, Thomas reached to grab it, but didn’t make it before Guy-Man’s hand came into contact with it.  Rather than feel a landscape of human features--eye sockets; a nose; lips; cheekbones or devilishly good, sassy looks--his face felt smooth and cool.  In shock that he could feel the hand against his face and yet the hand felt what he could assume to be plexiglass, he remained frozen.  
     “Please don’t panic again…  You’re still unstable.”  Thomas pleaded, reaching his other hand up to take Guy-Manuel’s wrist into his.  “We don’t need the doctors finding you awake yet.”  
     “How…  Am I…  Supposed to be **calm**!”  Guy-Manuel thrust Thomas’s hands away from him and attempted to stand, only to find that he really had no feeling below his waist.    
     Rather than let him fall to the tiled floor, Thomas caught him and kept him from the floor with inhuman ease.  Frantic beeping caught both of their attentions again and the golden-plated man began to thrash in his friend’s arms.  Guy-Manuel was aware of the whirring of fans again and warm discharge from somewhere above him as Thomas carefully, but easily lifted him and sat him back on the examination table.  
     “Let me go!  Why can’t I stand!?”  He demanded information, flailing a hand at the direction of Thomas’s helmet, having the hand caught harshly by the wrist.  
     “Guy!  Shut _up_!”  The loud vocalizer in the mask directed as there was a very human sigh from beneath the helmet.  “You can’t be moving around or be so… _ Emotional_ right now.  That’s the main problem with your integration.  Please, you can’t be flying off the handle every five minutes if you want things to run smoothly while you’re awake.”  
     If Guy-Man even had tear ducts anymore, he knew he would be crying out of frustration, “What is wrong with me?” His mechanical voice asked.  
     “I’m getting there.”  Thomas let go of him and resumed where he sat before.  “There was an accident on the way home from the bar that night.”  
     “Really?  How…”  He knew he was going to regret this question, “How bad was it?”  
     “We almost didn’t survive.” Thomas explained.  “I don’t remember any of it either, I’m just going off of what was in the news and what the doctors are telling me.”  
     “Okay…  So…”  That whirr in his chest was really beginning to distract him; what was that anyway?  “Am I paralyzed?  What…?  I don’t understand.”  
     “When we arrived at the hospital…  You had to be put on life-support, you were unresponsive--in a coma.  From what I’ve heard, I was conscious.  They sedated me as soon as they had me stabilized.  I had…  I had broken my spine in many places, but the only place that really mattered was where my spinal cord had been severed.”  
     Holding up a hand, Guy-Manuel stopped the story, “Why are you walking then?”  
     “I’m getting there.  My spinal cord had been severed in my mid back, my heart, brain and lungs were still working, but everything else was not.  My arms, well…  Somehow they found themselves away from me.  One of them did, the other was just irreparable.”  
     Again, incredulous, Guy-Man looked at both of his clearly non-prosthetic, moving arms.  
     “I know you don’t understand yet, but you will, so please bare with me.  As it turned out…  You weren’t brain dead…  However, you needed machines to do everything else for you.  Supply you with oxygen, pump your blood…  That sort of thing, because while I had a broken back, you had a broken neck.  From what I understand, any farther up your neck and the rest of you would be dead too.”  
     “Did you really buy all of this bullshit?” Guy-Manuel interrupted again, in denial more than anything else.  “So am I hallucinating all of this?  Unable to accept what’s really going on?” He made a mechanized laughing noise, it scared him enough to stop.  
     “No, this is real.”  
     “A likely story from a hallucination.” Guy-Manuel laughed again.  
     “Guy, shut up for like five more seconds, I’m almost there.”  
     “Fine…”  
     “Turns out my father has a cousin, Jean, our doctor, who works for the military.  He had special access and know-how for a very risky procedure that as far as we are able to tell is working quite well as I am moving again and you are conscious at all.”  
     “Okay, so…  More information would be appreciated, Yoda.”  
     “I can do without your snark today.”  
     “You’re getting it anyway.”  
     “Dad’s cousin is an expert in neurology and advanced robotics.”  
     If Guy-Man still had blood, it would’ve run cold just then.  Instead, he just felt an overwhelming sense of dread that flashed an X over his vision.  
     “Guy…  I don’t know how to tell you this…  I can hardly believe it myself, but seeing the operation photos and seeing you here now and…   _Knowing_ that it is you I am talking to, I have no choice but to believe it.”  
     “Can you just…”  The whirring in Guy-Manuel’s chest was nearly deafening to his audio receptors.  
     “I won’t stop, you need to hear it.”  
     “But I don’t want to.”  he asserted in a plaintive voice.  
     “You have to know.”  
     “Stop it, Thomas!”  
     “The rest of your body was completely useless except for one part--”  
     “Stop!”  
     “that was your brain.” Thomas kept speaking through his helpless friend’s distraught objections.  “So the only part that is left of you that is human is--”  
     “ **No**!”  
     “Your brain.”  
     “So what the fuck am I?!”  Guy-Manuel wished he could cry more than anything.  It would’ve been so cathartic by now…  He tried to wince back away from Thomas as his unreadable, silver visage leaned low and put his arms around him in an almost tender manner.  “What are you doing?!  Put me down!”  He uselessly struggled his upper half as Thomas walked him over to the room’s mirror.  
     “You’ve been given a new body…” Thomas explained gently, almost cooing into Guy-Man’s audio receptors as the other robot in his arms took in the view in utter mortification.  “You’re composed of lightweight, sturdy, metal alloy with internal circuitry hooked up to the various centers of your human brain, resting up here in your unusually rotund cranium.” Thomas gave the golden helmet a tap with a single chrome finger.  “Your brain is being fed by a synthetic blood blend that is constantly filtered and nutritioned by several cartridges within your chassis as well as nutrients that can be inspired.”  
     As Thomas talked on and on about Guy-Man’s new condition, the gold robot began to feel distinctly hot.  Which, if he was a robot made almost no sense to him.  At the same time he heard a much closer whirr to his ears; he wasn’t sure how he knew, but he knew these were internal cooling fans to keep him from cooking the gelatinous, soft tissue behind his black face.  He couldn’t really hear Thomas anymore and suddenly he felt himself convulse, the word “ERROR” flashing over his view and backwards in the mirror before him.

ERROR

ERROR

ERROR

Blackness.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

     The third time he awoke, Guy-Manuel wished more than anything that he had eyelids to close.  Again he found himself staring at a bright ceiling and his photoreceptors in his head automatically readjusted their sensitivity.  He still wasn’t comfortable with the missing sensation of breathing or the missing sensation of being uncomfortable from sitting in one position too long.  He knew with certainty that if he didn’t want to move, he really didn’t have to.  
     “Good morning, Mr. Homem-Christo.” The voice he recognized from the first time he awoke said from his left.  “I imagine that Mr. Bangalter explained much of your condition when he woke you?”  
     Guy-Manuel chose not to respond, merely fixing his gaze on the ceiling above.  He found that if he focused with great intensity upon a particular spot that he could zoom-in upon it.  He would’ve gasped were that an option.  Zooming out was a little bit more complicated however.  
     “I’m sure this is all quite a shock, but I have to run some motor tests on you now.  I need you to cooperate, is that clear?”  
     Guy-Manuel ignored him, still trying to get the hang of his new sight sensors..  
     “Should I fetch Mr. Bangalter?”  
     Guy-Man hardly even heard him as he began to make himself dizzy by quickly zooming in and out in succession upon a single divot in the ceiling.  He was sure he felt nausea, but Thomas had said he didn’t have a stomach.  Guy-Man supposed it was something akin to phantom-limb syndrome.  Which, he wasn’t sure if that applied to him, seeing as he _had_ limbs, he felt them, they were there, but they weren’t his original ones.  
     Guy-Manuel heard the doctor leave the room.  
     He slowly lifted a leather-clad hand, he had not been able to see what laid beneath it last time he was awake.  If the past two experiences were anything to go by, it was safe to assume that he was going to be put under again, so this would likely be his only chance to look at it.  Lifting his other hand and whilst entirely unsure of how he knew how to do these things, all things considered, he pulled back the leather from the insulated zipper and opened up the junction of his wrist.  It was one thing to know what was going to be there and another to see it.  Pushing apart the leather, Guy-Man observed a network of running, insulated wires beneath another layer of waterproofing.  His curiosity insatiable, he pulled the entirety of his leather and gold “glove” from his hand to look at the wires that swirled around a metal network.  He ‘flexed’ his fingers, hearing the hum of moving equipment; he wondered briefly how his joints were kept lubricated or if that would have to be addressed sometime in the foreseeable future.  
     Pulling the glove down over his hand again, he was surprised at his own dexterity to hook the zipper back into itself with one hand and easily close it up again.  He examined his two hands before his face next, turning them both back and forth, in unison and then in separate directions.  It amazed him how real they felt to him…  He folded his fingers together, steepled them, made fists and then relaxed again.  
     The valve in his chest whirred loudly to him as did the fans in his head, he did not notice any heating problems however and didn’t feel even the slightest bit unstable.  He asked himself how long he must’ve been asleep for such problems to be so easily fixed between one section of wakefulness and another.  Moving to touch his face, he froze his hands inches from his visage and chose not to.  He, he but them back on his lap, fully-knowing he wasn’t ready for that again.  He could handle not having real hands that worked, but he knew that he didn’t have his own face anymore…  Few things fucked up a person more than not looking like themselves.  He slid his hands back down off his thighs to the table and stared straight ahead.  
     The door to his room opened.  
     “He’s completely conscious, but he’s not acknowledging me.” The doctor said.  
     “He does that.  There’s nothing wrong.” Thomas assured him.  “Nothing with his personality, anyway.”  
     Guy-Man would’ve laughed at Thomas’s easy acceptance of his ignoring another living thing’s presence if he were up to any kind of positive expression.  He rotated his head towards his best friend who seemed to be walking around unaided, also in actual clothes…  A leather-encased robot with a giant chrome cranium in a colorful button-up shirt and ripped jeans would’ve made him laugh as well in any other situation.  From where he was laying, he couldn’t help, but wonder why their respective heads were chosen to be their robot helmets…  And why Thomas hadn’t opted for that little smirk to be removed from his head.  Guy-Man was aware of the question mark over his vision suddenly, but he wasn’t sure exactly how long it had been there…  
     “What’s that supposed to mean?” Robot-Thomas asked in an amused tone.  He no longer sounded mechanical when he spoke, there was still the telltale tinniness that came with an artificial voice, but everything else sounded quite natural.  “Don’t you like my old duds?”  
     An X appeared on Guy-Man’s facial screen.  
     “Use your words, Guy.”  
     “Ridiculous.” Was all Guy-Man said in his generated voice before turning his head to stare at the ceiling once more.  
     “As if I could ever look ridiculous like this.” Thomas struck a pose, but was disappointed to see Guy-Man wasn’t focused on him anymore.  As he still had a functioning human heart, saying that he felt his “heart sink” was still pretty accurate.  “I’d like to speak with him alone for a moment.” he requested of the doctor.  
     “I’m unsure if that’s wise after last time, Bangalter.”  
     “Do you want me to convince him to cooperate, or not?”  
      _Cooperate with what…?_  Guy-Man asked himself, unsure if he wanted any part of what was going to happen.  However, he knew himself all too well, if Thomas thought something was a good idea, it didn’t take him long to be convinced that it was.  Unless, of course, it was actually a truly horrendous idea…  He would’ve scoffed at himself if he could, he was sure Thomas’s persuasion skills were how they had both ended up so horribly mangled in the first place.  Perhaps he should consider--             
     “Guy-Man, sorry to interrupt your thoughts, but I need you to pay attention.” Thomas was alone in the room with him, standing over the bed.  His hands were situated in his pockets, his shoulders slumped in his usual “I’m being lazy” stance--it somehow soothed Guy-Man to know that things hadn’t really changed all that much.  
     “What?” the reclining man responded, pushing himself up to sit.  For the first time, he had actually looked at his legs and abdomen.  He knew he was naked because everything was covered in supple, black leather, his chest and stomach had a little bit of muscle-like texturing, but the only thing that really disturbed him was his groin…  He could examine and lament later, first he had to pay attention to Thomas.  
     “Jean--you know, my dad’s cousin?--he’s going to run a physical and a couple tests on you in a few minutes.  And it would be great if you were honest and helpful during them…”  
     Guy-Man tried to roll his eyes, but he realized he didn’t have any.  
     “I saw that.” Thomas huffed.  
     “Saw what?!”  
     “You were rolling your eyes at me.”  
     “How?!”  
     “You shifted your head about five degrees to the right and slumped your shoulders.  You only do that when you roll your eyes.”  
     Guy-Man was stunned speechless--his best friend really was a robot under there.  
     “Sorry.” Thomas raised a hand from his pocket as if to rub the back of his neck, but he seemed to think better of it and reseated the hand in its prior perch.  
     “What kind of tests are these?” Guy-Manuel questioned to keep his mind off of Thomas’s strange behavior.  
     “Just to see how well your brain is functioning moving your body.”  
     “Clearly it’s fine if I’m doing the exact same things that I used to down to the tiniest variation in degree…”  The gold robot sniped.  
     “Guy, just go with it…  If these tests go well it means you can stay conscious for future procedures.”  
     That certainly caught his attention, “I won’t have to go back to sleep?”  
     “No.  You don’t really have internal nerves, so they can perform all kinds of adjustments with you ‘awake’ and able to tell them how you’re feeling.”  Thomas laughed then, a pained wheeze accompanying it, Guy-Man wanted to examine the noise in more detail, but as soon as it started, it ceased.  
     “What was so funny?” he chose to ask instead.  
     “Your face.” Thomas explained.  Something peculiar happened too, the screen of where Thomas’s eyes would be read “CUTE”.  In the time Guy-Man assessed that he was a fucking weirdo, the read-out disappeared.  
     “I don’t…”  He had to say it sometime, “I don’t have a face.”  
     “Of course you do.”  Thomas took a finger and tapped on the surface of his plexiglass screen, creating a soft thumping noise “You can make this do whatever you want it to if you think hard enough.”  
     “I wasn’t thinking about anything.”  
     “It’s mostly emotional based rather than concrete thoughts for you.”  
      _For me?_  “Yours are concrete thoughts, I would think, then.”  
     “Exactly.”  Across Thomas’s face read “GOOD JOB”.  
    _Why was he thinking “cute”?_ Guy-Man puzzled, choosing again to skip it in favor of more interesting topics, “What did my face do, then?”  
     “Literally, it lit up.  You have colors over here, remember?”  Thomas tapped both extreme sides of Guy-Man’s face in unison.  
     “Why did it have to be this damn helmet?” Guy-Man took both of Thomas’s wrists and brought them away from his face.  
     “That…”  Thomas paused, his facial read-out a jumble of red pixels.  “That was a decision made by me.”  
     “Why?!” Guy-Man hissed out of his vocalizer.  
     “Neither of us had faces anymore.  That being said, if we couldn’t look like ourselves, I thought it would’ve been better for us to at least have familiar faces.”  
     When “SORRY” scrolled across Thomas’s vision, Guy-Man realized that he shouldn’t have been so angry about it.  It was something of sound logic, at least he knew what he had been looking at in the mirror that day was him.  He was also glad to know at first sight that the man in the silver helmet was the same person who had always worn it.  
     “It could have been worse.” Guy-Manuel conceded to his friend.  “You made the right decision.” he reassured.   _All_ things considered.   
     “If you remain awake, also, we can start to discuss what we want to do after all of this…”  
     “What do you mean?”  
     “Obviously we’re the only people so far this has been done to.  People in the public eye, I mean.”  Thomas gently broached.  “Scientists are going to want to keep a close eye on us.”  
     Guy-Man saw red, “They can shove it up their asses.”  
     “I had a feeling you’d say that.”  Thomas didn’t exactly sound disappointed though…  “We can talk more later.  For now, just do as Jean says.”  
     “Fine.”  
     “I’ll go get him.”  Thomas turned towards the door, Guy-Man being smacked with a new, terrifying question out of the blue.  
     “Do my parents know?”  
     Thomas stopped and took his hand from his pocket to rub his neck, which, as Guy-Man observed, was covered in various black lumps, “I don’t know how much my parents have told yours.” he started, “They know you’re alive, but the last time my father visited with an update was a month ago.”  
     “A… Month?!”  
     “We’ve been in the hospital for over two months now.” Thomas informed, “You’ve been out for most of it because you required so much more intensive work.” he paused to shrug, “Milly visited me two weeks ago, though.”  
     “And… How did that go?”  Guy-Man had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach about her visit…  It wasn’t exactly a common problem to one day turn up at a hospital and your boyfriend is a robot.  
     “She asked if I could still have sex as I was.” Thomas laughed.  “That answer is obviously no.”  
     “Is she going to stay?”  
     “That answer is obviously no.” The robot repeated in a flatter tone of voice.  
     “How are you?”  
     “I don’t blame her.” Thomas shrugged, “Nobody should have to deal with something this fucked up.” The tall man left the room at that point, Jean filling his place.  Thomas didn’t return with him, however, but he had nonetheless agreed to be cooperative regardless of his presence.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if you can find the one line in this whole chapter that I want to strangle myself over. ~MN

     The tests the irascible and emotional robot had to endure were really basic tasks, mostly testing fine motor skills and walking.  Guy-Man passed all of the tests without any trouble, but had considerable disinterest in the whole thing considering that he A--felt naked--and B--really needed a cigarette.  Where the hospital gown was easily provided, the drugs weren’t so.  
     “You don’t have lungs anymore, you can’t smoke.” The doctor had told him as if he should’ve figured it out on his own.  
     “Is there something I can take for it then?!”  
     “You don’t have a stomach either, and a patch won’t help as you don’t have a traditional circulatory system.”  
     That conversation had ended in a very frustrated, crackling screech as Guy-Man’s vocalizer gave out.  The doctor then asked if he would’ve liked a sedative to take the edge off and not knowing what he would be agreeing to, Guy-Man of course accepted it.  
     “What are you doing?!”  Guy-Man jumped forward as the doctor ran his hand from the base of the robot’s neck to the space just below his shoulder blades.  
     “Your nutrient sub-port is back here, I assumed this would be more comfortable…  Would you prefer me to use your main one?”  
     “Where…  Where _is_ my main one?” Guy-Man asked, very frustrated with this whole procedure.  
     The doctor walked back around to his front, untying the upper half of the hospital gown and tapped the area of where his diaphragm would normally be three times.  Guy-Man, of course hopped away from the sensation at the doctor got down on his knees to better access the port whose cover had slid open with a light “click”.  
     “Do you want the sedative, or not, Mr. Homem-Christo?”  
     Uncomfortable with another man on his knees in front of him, Guy-Manuel crossed his arms over his chest and huffed, “Fine.”  
     As the doctor readied his syringe, the gold robot decided he really was curious about everywhere else he must’ve had some sort of port.  If they were so well hidden by sliding panels in his leather exterior, he could have one nearly anywhere.  However, as quickly as he asked that question, he received an answer from within…  Unsure of how he knew, he detected around twenty separate ports on his body.  Two were hidden under his chest, there was a cluster of them on the back of his neck, a row of them down his “spine”, the one the doctor was currently injecting a syringe into, and peculiarly enough for him, a cluster in his groin.  He logged the information away for further examination at a later date.  
     “Done.”  The doctor declared and Guy-Man nodded his head placidly.  
     “Is there anything else?”  
     “We can start going over technical details of your body today, if you would like.”  
     “No offense, but I would rather have Thomas with me for that.”  
     “Beg your pardon?”  
     “Thomas is just better at explaining complicated technical things.” Guy-Man shrugged.  Understanding the machines that helped them produce music was one thing--he, exactly like Thomas, could figure one out frontwards and backwards in no time flat--complicated mechanics and computers were something else entirely.  
     “I’m completely capable of giving you the information in a succinct, easily-understood manner.”  
     “I’d still rather have Thomas help.”  The robot shrugged again, stepping away from the doctor and striding over to the window.  He really didn’t care, he just wanted Thomas--this was all confusing enough and looking at another functioning human being, let-alone the man who had “fixed” the both of them just irritated him.  
     “He cannot, he’s incapacitated at the moment.”  
     “Incapacitated?” Guy-Man looked over his shoulder, a bright question mark on his screen.  “What do you mean by ‘incapacitated’?”  If something was wrong with him, he could not be expected to stand idly by.  
     “He needs to let his mechanical parts recharge.”  
     “It’s like he’s asleep, then?”  
     “It’s likely he is also asleep, yes.”  
     Guy-Man was surprised that a shiver ran up his spine, at least the uncomfortable things about being human stuck around, “Do I have to do the same?”  
     “Of course.  With you, it’s a little bit more imperative.  Some of Bangalter’s parts don’t need the robotics to keep him functioning, if his power failed, he’d be rather helpless, albeit, still alive.  You would not be so lucky.  It goes without saying that you should be conservative with your power-cells and recharge as often as possible.  Don’t take any unnecessary risks until life-support systems and power-cell retention have advanced.”  The doctor forewarned.  
     “What… What would happen?”  
     “Your brain would asphyxiate and die, of course.”  
      _Of course…_  “Do I have indicators?  Like…  A car low on gas?”  
     “Yes, you do, however, with how your secondary memory bank and sensory-conversion processor work, you’d be able to feel it before the readout is brought to your attention.”  
     “My whats?”  This was why he needed Thomas.  
     “Your sensory-conversion processor takes the data collected from, say, your surface indicators on your skin or your audio sensors and converts them into electric impulses that your brain can understand as sensation.  The extra database combined with it records anomalies in sensation to be examined.  When you feel, see or hear something that you have never have before, for example, you can play it back, allowing you to figure out what it possibly was that caused it--this can be somewhat important if the cause of it was a potentially a problem.  It also has more uses for your memory personally, once you have a feel of how to access it, of course--allowing you to replay another’s dialog in your head or re-see a past situation.”  
     With nothing more than a question mark on his face, Guy-Man adequately conveyed his nonplussed outlook on all aforementioned materials.  
     The doctor sighed, “For all intents and purposes, you have a second brain located between your hips.”  he explained before requesting “If you will drop your gown I will--”  
     “No.”  He returned his gaze to the window; now that it had been explained in a way he understood, he held no more interest for the subject.  
     “Are you sur--”  
     “I’m sure I’d rather have Thomas present.”  
     “You’re quite fixated on him, aren’t you?” The doctor grumped exhaustedly.  
     “He’s the only other person who can possibly understand my situation right now.”  Guy-Manuel reasoned. _Even then, he seems to be taking to it a lot better than me.  
_      “You would rather shut out everyone else just because _you_ don’t think they could understand you?  Even if they know more about your condition than you do?”  
     “You might be Thomas’s family, but you aren’t mine.”  The gold robot looked over his shoulder, “So, doctor, kindly keep your thoughts to yourself.”  
     “Thomas said you might say something like that.”  
     “Did he?” Guy-Man shrugged and returned looking out the window, “He knows me well.”  
     “He suggested that I tell you this:" the doctor began, going out on a limb.  "There are more people that honestly want to help you than you think.”  
     “He’s never had a problem with my outlook before.” he huffed in disbelief.  
     Well, that hadn't worked “You’ve never been in a situation quite like this before either.”  The doctor reminded him.  
     “Can I go outside?”  Guy-Man inquired.  
     “Not yet.  I would imagine that you’re quite excited for that.”  
     “You could say that.”  he answered wistfully.  
     “For now, would you at least accept me teaching you how to recharge your power-cells?”  
     Turning from the window to lean on the ledge and answer the doctor, he gave a long-suffering noise, “Fine.”

\----

     “Mr. Bangalter?”  
     Thomas groaned, he was _sure_ that he had put up a notice to leave him in peace for a few hours.  
     “I’m sorry to disturb you, but…”  It was his nurse.  
     “But what?”  He questioned robotically--he had a bad feeling that on the other side of that “but” was going to be the name “de Homem-Christo”.  
     “There has been a small problem.”  
      _Sounds like…_   “GUY-MAN” Scrolled across his facial display.  
     “I’m afraid so.” the nurse answered with a deep, frustrated sigh.  
     Turning his view on, Thomas sat up straight and reached to the base of his neck to release his charge connector.  “Where is he?”

  
     Walking into Guy-Man’s room, Thomas raised a hand to his head in an old gesture to rub the bridge of a nose he didn’t have anymore.  Instead, he rested them on the brow of his facial read-out and released a sigh beneath his helmet.  The golden robot had his doctor’s wrists in his hands, and him pushed against the wall.  At their feet was a long-corded charge connector, its gold-lined circuitry a little worse for wear.  A crew of three men were trying to pull Guy-Man off his doctor, meanwhile.  
 _It was just a_ great _idea to give Guy machine strength, wasn’t it?_  “MERDE” he displayed before speaking, “What is going on?”  
     Guy-Man released his doctor and shoved the other men away with graceful ease.  Thomas wasn’t caught off guard, however, to see that his friend had not been expecting to have so much strength.  He folded his arms over his chest, his screen flushing a bright pink.  Thomas controlled his thoughts, however, before “CUTE” became apparent on his face again.  
     “Well?”  Thomas waited while his cousin smoothed down his clothes and stormed out of the room.  Guy-Man said nothing, “What happened?”  
     “I was handling the situation.”  
     Thomas looked after the way his cousin exited and the way that the other men were slowly getting to their feet before responding, “Clearly.”  His friend unmoving, Thomas strode past him and picked up the charging connector from the floor, “Didn’t want to recharge?”  He wagged the large, phallically-shaped object back and forth.  
     “He didn’t tell me that’s what that did…”  
     “Sure, he didn’t.” Thomas released a sigh, sitting the dented contraption down on Guy-Man’s lightly-padded table.  “Did it occur to you to just go with what the doctor tells you to?”  
     Guy-Man looked away from him, tightening his crossed arms over his chest.  
     “Is something wrong?”  
     “What kind of fucking question is that, Bangalter!?” The gold robot spat at his counterpart.  He shook his head back and forth, turning his body away from him.   The row of exclamation points and question marks that scrolled by on Thomas’s face reminded him that he did not ordinarily _yell_ at his friend.  There were shouts of direction if he forgot something, there was needing to be heard over a crowd, but he didn’t think that he had really raised his voice at Thomas in years.  
     The rest of the hospital staff sensing something of a tense moment, they each filed out of the room, not quite closing the door behind themselves.  They weren’t all that sure what they were supposed to do, however, if their confrontation became physical.  They couldn’t even handle one mechanical man…  
     “ _Everything_ is wrong right now.  I’m not even convinced that any of this is real.”  Guy-Man raised a gesticulating hand, unsure what to really do with it other than slap the air around.  “I don’t have a real body anymore!  I can’t smoke, I can’t eat, even sleeping is complicated because, what if I fall asleep and my body isn’t plugged in?  Will I die?  Or will I wake up before that happens, but not have the time to get somewhere to recharge?”  
     “You really shouldn’t worry about that, it’s not like there’s any real danger of that happening.”  Thomas reminded him, leaning against the windowsill.  
     “I don’t breathe; I don’t take shits anymore; I can’t drink anything; I can’t shower anymore and I’ll _never_ have sex again or masturbate!”  Guy-Man made the the mistake in his frustration of touching his face.  “I don’t have a face!”  Somehow, even though he lacked all necessary parts for it, Guy-Man felt an incredibly empty pain in his chest.  A crackling moan slid from his vocalizer as if of its own accord.  
     Realizing what was happening, Thomas pushed off from the sill and strode calmly over to his friend, placing a hand on his back.  Thomas was certain that leaving now wasn’t the best choice.  Doing the usual ignoring that he was crying as he patted his back wasn’t likely to work either.  He really wasn’t sure what to tell him to do, however.  They both processed their emotions differently normally…  Thomas couldn’t tell him to let it all out because as Guy-Man sobbed in his auto-tuned voice he pointed out “I can’t even cry!”.  There was only one thing he really knew he could do when his friend felt like this, it just worked out well that he responded well to physical contact from him.  
     With a strong arm, he pulled his shorter counterpart against his body, wrapping his other arm around him.  Guy-Manuel didn’t object, leaning his black face against Thomas’s ugly shirt as all of his emotions poured out as inhuman noises of metal scraping together and echoing.  The noises almost reminded him of modified samples they used in their music...  
     “It’s going to be fine.” Thomas soothed, “We’re both still here.”  He hoped his voice didn’t sound as awkward as he felt.  It must not have because Guy-Man’s fingers dug into his shirt and pulled themselves into fists, “At least you’re not the only one that’s ended up in this situation.”  
     The noise from Guy-Man’s vocalizer grew higher and more shrill until it crackled and gave out all together.  Thomas was worried that he had shut down again as he seemed to go limp in his arms, but the still fiercely-clutching fingers in his back told him otherwise.\  
     “What’s going to happen to us…?”  Guy-Man’s vocalizer was muffled against the fabric of Thomas’s shirt, but his audio receptors were more than capable of understanding him.  
     “That’s for us to decide…  The doctor is my family.  He hasn’t released much to the public about our procedure and, from what I understand, it’s something of a military secret.  He’s killed if the public finds out and he’s also dead along with us taken in for testing and such if the military finds out about us.”  
     “Shit…”  
     “He risked plenty to have us alive, Guy.”  
     “I didn’t know.”  
     “That’s normal for you.”  
     “Shut up.” Guy-Man stood up straight and pushed him away.  He regretted the space between them directly after, but wasn’t about to pull him back over so soon.  “I just don’t want this to be real.”  
     “Too bad that it is.” Thomas pointed out, “And we’re both going to have to deal with it.”  
     Guy-Man slumped his shoulders and turned his head away a little.  
     “What did I tell you about rolling your eyes at me?”  
     “I’ll do what I like.” Guy-Man displayed what looked to be a crude drawing of a hand with only one finger standing up…  
     “Was that necessary?” Thomas barely contained his urge to laugh.  “You still have fingers.”  
     “Wasn’t it _you_ that said it was a good thing my face told you what I was thinking?”  
     “Why are you just being constantly negative about this?”  
     “Because, Mr. Logical, I don’t **want** to be a fucking robot.”  Guy-Man clapped one hand over his adjacent bicep with its fist facing upwards as he spoke in a “fuck you” gesture.  
     “Guy-Emmanual!” Thomas raised his hand again, once more forgetting his lack of a nose bridge to pinch.  “We are what we are now.  There is no going back…  So I suggest you do some serious homework during our stay in this hospital; this is a time of discovery, everything is new again--we’re human after all, indulge that, be curious about everything--the only thing that’s really different about us is we now have random access memories.”  
     Guy-Man made a robot’s version of a scoff (and was supremely proud of himself for figuring out how to) and crossed his arms again, “Fine.”  
     “Don’t you just say ‘fine’...  You said earlier you were going to cooperate and gave me your usual ‘fine’ and that didn’t turn out so well.”  
     “What should I say, then?”  
     “Be more enthused?”  
     “Fine!”  
     Thomas stared at him, nothing on his screen, saying nothing.  
     Guy-Man, his face even more unreadable given that his mask did not have a smirk etched into its front, stared back at him.  
     “You’re still Guy.” Thomas tapped the top of his helmet with a finger.  
     “Would you prefer me to be someone else?”  
     “Definitely not.”

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

     Another two weeks passed in much the same fashion.  Granted, Guy-Manuel was significantly more cooperative than he had been beforehand--this did not mean that he wasn’t still difficult at times, to the point of even Thomas being unable to wrest his collaboration.  It was also soon to be found out that it was nearly impossible to get him to pay attention to much that didn’t interest him unless Thomas was around.  For this reason, he had almost no comprehension of what most of his own anatomy did.  He understood the mechanisms that kept his brain from cooking, understood emergency-auxiliary power to his life-support and learned adequately how to assess if he had a short in his systems; what he did not remember were the purposes of his many ports--both on his neck and in his groin--and if someone needed to interface his below-the-belt brain for any reason he wouldn’t be able to tell them bupkis about that.  Sure, cooperation might have improved, but to say that things were “ _grand_ ” was something of a one-syllable joke.  
     “What’s that cord for?” Guy-Man asked as Thomas hooked it into the back of his neck and offered him the other end.  
     “I’ve been bored and have been working on some new material.”  
     Guy-Man flashed a question mark, “What does that have to do with the cord?  Plus, unless you’ve been given more freedom than me, where did you get our synths from?”  
     “We have computers inside of us now…  It was also quite easy to get Jean to stop by our space and collect a few things for me.  Maybe he would be more willing to do the same with you if--”  
     “What does that have to do with it?”  Guy-Man shrugged his shoulders in an approximation of a sigh.  “Spare me the attempts at guilting me.”  
     “I want you to listen to what I’ve come up with.  Same as always.”  Thomas explained, prodding his friend’s shoulder with the other end of the cord.  
     Guy-Man shied away and went to sit down, crossing his legs and threading his fingers together, “I’d rather just listen to it.” He said.  
     “I didn’t want to disturb anyone…”  The nervous robot excused.  
     “Disturb--Thomas, they gave the whole common room to us.” Guy-Man motioned around the empty space, the sounds of local Parisian news echoing about it from the television.  The gold robot actually missed the presence of other people.  He couldn’t even imagine how social-butterfly Thomas was handling things.  He had been awake for significantly longer and had apparently only seen his one nurse, Jean and himself socially on a frequent basis.  Sure, his parents had visited once recently, Guy-Man got to see them with some relief and there was that one visit from Milly, but that was hardly a joyous affair.  
     “DENSE” scrolled by much to Guy-Man’s confusion, the word quickly disappeared and Guy-Man was beginning to wonder at Thomas’s frequent thoughts.  The flashes of “CUTE” were quite common, but as usual, he never asked his friend about them.  He could think what he wanted, he couldn’t say Thomas never did things that struck him as special--things that reminded him of why they were friends.  If anything, Guy-Man felt sorry that his thoughts were broadcasted on his face.  Sure, his own feelings now were, but many people were already like that.  
     “If you would rather just hear it.” Thomas removed the connector from the back of his neck and sat down at Guy-Man’s crossed legs.  Taking a moment to access and load the soundbytes, he watched as his friend leaned his “chin” against his gold-plated fingers and down-turned his head to look at him.  
      _Why are you sitting down there?_  The robot in the chair wanted to ask, surveying that on either side of him were open seats…  
     Thomas felt quite silly and in a moment of whimsy, leaned his forehead against Guy-Man’s leg before a few notes began to play from his vocalizer.  As the robot sitting above him said nothing, he assumed that he didn’t look as ridiculous as he felt, but that was just because he was missing Guy-Man’s evident curiosity flashing upon his face.

  
     “What do you think?” Thomas questioned at the end of his presentation.  
     His friend made a crackling noise which Thomas had just begun to realize was his equivalent of a thinking “hmmm”.  “It’s not what I would’ve done.” he finally answered.  “The beat’s not right at all and it’s a bit too popish.”  
     “What would you rather do?”  
     “Scrap it; start over.”  As he spoke, Thomas could see in his mindseye Guy-Man biting at one of his lips in thought, his eyes squinted slightly.  If he still had hair, he would be brushing it from his eyes by now, seeable in the way that the other man had his forehead resting against the palm of his hand.  
     “That’s harsh.”  
     “It’s what I think.”  
     “Well, what if I did this?”

  
     The two spent an hour on one track, Guy-Man growing all the more frustrated that he had no real hand in its development.  It wasn’t that he didn’t like what Thomas came up with--if that were the case, they never would’ve produced any music together at all--it just needed something that his partner wasn’t quite seeing.  
     “What are you so upset about?”  Thomas had since assumed the chair Guy-Man had been sitting in, watching as he paced back and forth across the room.  “If you really want to do something with it, you’ve had your recording system working, haven’t you?”  
     Guy-Man stopped pacing, “I have no sense of it--”  
     “No, you do, you just don’t want to use it.”  
     “Don’t tell me what I know and what I don’t.” The shorter robot stabbed a finger at him.  
     “You’ve used it before.” Thomas slouched back in the chair.  “You’ve used it to mock Jean.”  
     “That was--”  
     “Many times.”  
     Guy-Man waved him off and resumed pacing.  
     “Have you or have you not been recording?”  
     “Yes.” Guy-Man grunted.  
     “How about instead of pouting, you just play it back with your own modifications.  Tweaking our music has never been easier than it is now…”  
     “I’m not your instrument, Bangalter--go hump a keyboard instead.” he fussed  
     “Stop changing the subject.”  Thomas suppressed his need to rub his visor brow.  He heard his friend finally give an exhausted, mechanical “huff”.  
     “I’d rather do things the traditional way.”  
     It wasn’t like Thomas could blame him for clinging to what little human limitations he had left…  It also wasn’t like he didn’t find irritation in it, however.  He missed being human too, but there were many advantages to their new bodies that Guy-Man was clearly rejecting.  
     “I love the traditional way, Guy.”  Thomas made sure to point out, “But we do not have the option to do it that way right now.  We have nothing to do besides read the mediocre material here, watch the news, learn about our own specifications and worry about how our lives are going to be changed once we leave here.”  
     Guy-Man leaned against the far wall and nodded his large head with a robotic hum.  
     “It isn’t like anything will really come of this messing around, I just want some sort outlet or sense of normalcy with my friend.”  His counterpart was still not keen on answering, but Thomas recognized that as a good thing in this case.  Over the years he couldn’t ever help but wonder what went on in Guy-Man’s head when he was silent.  He always spent so much time keeping his thoughts and feelings to himself.  Not that he personally was any less guilty, but when it came to being vocal about those things, it was definitely his stronger suit.  
     Striding back over to Thomas, Guy-Man plopped down into a chair next to him and played back his modified version of the track they had been working over.

  
     “You don’t always have to be the lecturer.” Guy-Man told him as Thomas formulated a new mix in his head.  
     “I’m not giving you lectures.”  It took the robot a moment to tear himself away from the music in his head and properly process Guy-Man’s words, causing a slight stutter when he spoke.  
     “I’m not saying you sound superior, Thomas.  Why bother with all the loose dialog when you know the easiest way to get me to agree with you?”  
     “Because going straight after your feelings doesn’t seem fair.”  
     “Think I’m so easily manipulated?”  
     Thomas let out a few bars of tinny laughter, “You?  Easy?”  
     “Hah, right.” A little smile displayed itself over Guy-Man’s screen.  “But you do know my soft spots.”  
      _Most of the time it’s--_ “ME”.  
     “Self-important, aren’t we?” Thomas heard the smirk in Guy-Man’s voice.  
     “As if you don’t know you’re a bruise to me too.”  
     “The dark spot on you that never seems to go away.”  The golden one mused; the silver robot gave him a playful shove, forcing a laugh out of him.  “Be careful there, an emotional robot would be an oxymoron, right?”  
     Slowly and smoothly, Thomas turned his head towards him, staring him down, “Would you rather I not be?” he asked robotically.  
     “I’m a pot talking to a kettle, Thomas.” Guy-Man brought to his attention with a light-hearted chuckle.  His conversant bent low to lay his silver head on his shoulder and if it was that he still had breath, he would’ve released it slowly in contentment.  
     Truthfully, they hadn’t had much alone time together.  For a reason that was never quite explained by either Jean or Thomas, Thomas was not moved to stay in the same room as as his counterpart or vise-versa.  This, nonetheless, did not stop one or the other from spending the bulk of their free time in the other’s room.  However, there were always nurses or a doctor present, but as of today, they were allowed to request time in a patient common room.  Originally Guy-Man’s idea, he hadn’t expected it to be so readily available to them, but upon seeing how they were still alone, he realized his plan had somewhat backfired.  At least he had time with Thomas.  
     “At least this didn’t change.” The shorter one commented quietly, barely resting his round head against the dome of his companion’s.  
     “Still my headrest, my armrest…” Thomas humorously agreed.  
     “Psh, my body’s entirely fabricated, why couldn’t they make me taller?”  
     “Do you want my reason, or the real reason?” the silver man laughed, throwing an arm around Guy-Man’s shoulders.  
     “Which one is going to be more at my expense?”  
     “The real reason is because they wanted you to still be able to walk under the turnstiles in the subway.”  Thomas swiftly got a slap to the head and began to laugh.  
     “What was _your_ reason, Bangalter?” Guy-Man huffed, his hand curled up into a fist to punch him.  
     “Your nerves were not originally wired to be in a larger body.  It was to make the conversion easier.”  
     “I’m throwing salt water into your circuits.” The other man huffed, crossing his arms over his chest.  “We’re getting back to that track before I have the urge to strangle you.”  
     As Thomas began to access and replay the track again, their doctor strolled into the room.  With a quick slap to the silver dome again, Thomas ceased his playback and turned to see who Guy-Man had his attention on.  
     “Do we have to go back to our rooms?” Thomas assumed.  
     “That, yes, but mostly for a more pressing matter.” Jean explained, a package of some sort under his left arm “Guy-Manuel’s family wants to visit him.”  
     It didn’t take a second after the information had been giving for Guy-Man to shove Thomas away from him and stand up.  He rushed to the doctor asking where they were, but as Jean gave him the information, he pressed a hand to his leather chest, “Wouldn’t you rather get dressed first?”  He offered Guy-Man the parcel which turned out to be one of his t-shirts and a pair of jeans.  “Wouldn’t want them seeing your naked ports, would you?”  
     “They’re just ports!” Guy-Man gasped, inexplicably embarrassed as his screen turned a pinkish red.  “I have no other anatomy!”  He emphasized this by running his hand down his front and between his legs; the tips of his fingers made muted clicking noises as they ran over the various ports that rested there.  
     Thomas, meanwhile, watched him; there was a growing… Something that he didn’t really have a name for inside of him.  He determined it must’ve been misinterpreted stimulus in his conversion processor because it made no sense to him at all.  He made a note to play the sensation back later as to properly ascertain its cause.  
     “I’d still suggest wearing clothes.” Jean offered him the garments again with considerable humor in his eyes.  Guy-Man grunted, snatching them from him and quickly forced his legs into the torn jeans.  “Your brother is here as well.”  
     Yanking the shirt over his head and shoulders, Guy-Man smoothed his clothes down and realized that they hadn’t been the ones his mother had been holding on to.  One of them, likely Paul, had actually gone to his flat to retrieve them for him.  How thoughtful…  At the time he became aware of Thomas standing and following after him, Guy-Man took off down the hall; his speed impossible for humans who had organic and less resilient  muscles.  
     “If he really wanted to leave, no one could stop him…”  Jean almost dreamily observed under his breath, much to Thomas’s disgust.  
     “Trust me, Jean.  If I wasn’t here, he already would’ve.”  Thomas assured, surprising the doctor into averting his gaze elsewhere.  Pretending not to notice the man’s embarrassment, Thomas began a light jog down the hall after his friend.


	6. Chapter 6

     Given that it was the first time Guy-Man had ever attempted running in his new body, he honestly hadn’t been expecting how fast he would be going.  He also had never before considered how important the rubber nubs on the bottoms of his feet and toes would be in stopping.  As he found himself running straight past his and Thomas’s respective rooms, he was able to successfully skid to a stop at the end of the hallway just inches before smacking into the wall.  
     Guy-Man relaxed his shoulders and released a verbal sigh of relief before turning around and walking back up the hallway.  Thomas leaned against the door to his room, his sneaker-concealed feet crossed, “This is why I don’t run as fast as I can.” he chuckled.  
     “How was I supposed to know that would happen?” Guy-Man waved him off.  
     “Because you don’t have muscles with limitations anymore.” The silver robot reminded him.  “If you don’t calibrate your legs properly you can--”  
     “No, be quiet.  We can talk about it later.”  
     Thomas sighed.  
     “I don’t want to be weird in front of _them_.” Guy-Man motioned to the door behind him.  
     “We’ll talk about it later.”  Pushing off from the door, Thomas stepped to be at his friend’s shoulder.  “You should be the first person they see.” he urged him to enter the room.  At Guy-Man’s lack of forward motion when he previously seemed incapable of waiting to see his family again, Thomas hesitantly lifted a hand and rested it on his shoulder.  
     The shorter robot jumped, surprised out of his contemplations by the sudden weight of support on his shoulder, “I’m fine…”  He muttered nervously.  Thomas shrugged, answering, “Just letting you know I’m here.”  
     “Psh, where else would you be?”  Guy-Man tried to ease himself, reaching back to strike Thomas’s denim-covered thigh and becoming very aware of just how close in proximity they were.  
     “Good point.” whispered Thomas in his pained, insubstantial voice.  It was barely audible to Guy-Man, but he knew he heard it… He also knew he _felt_ the vibration of vocal cords which made about as much sense to him as a fish walking because he was certain Thomas didn’t have any.  
     “Thomas, did you just speak?”  
     “Yeah?  I talk a lot.”  
     “No, I mean--” Thomas gave him a shove towards the door.  
     “Stop stalling and go in.”  
     Gripping the doorknob, Guy-Man slowly turned it and stepped into his hospital room, Thomas in tow.  What greeted him inside was something less than joyous; both of his parents sat hunched over in the chairs of his room, shock written across their faces.  
     He tried to be casual at first, raising his hand to give a small wave with his “Uh, hi?” but found that all it did was make things more awkward.  Had someone not told them he was a robot now?  
     “G-Guillaume…?” his mother stuttered in disbelief, his father still silent.  
     “Yeah…”  Nervously, Guy-Man worried at the hem of his shirt with two of his fingers, slowly beginning to lean back on silent Thomas.  As his parents took up most of his attention at that moment in time, he wasn’t even the least bit aware of his brother Paul’s presence until he was being blindsided by him.  
     Thomas stepped back as Guy-Man stumbled to the side, the long-haired Paul attached to him by means of a bearhug.  It didn’t take long for the robot to right himself, stand up straight and begin flailing against the seventy-two-and-a-half kilos of man suckered onto him.  
     “Paul!  Get off me!” Guy-Man struggled--an X flashing on his facial screen--and tried to disentangle himself from his brother’s arms, being careful not to hurt him.  Try as he did, however, he could not dislodge his little brother’s fingers as they dug harshly into his simulated flesh.  Once giving up the fight to remove him, Guy-Man gave in and returned the hug.  
     “Of all the stupid things that you could have done!” Paul suddenly let go and yelled into his blank face, spattering the black plexiglass with spit.  He gave his brother a punch to his chest, but winced back upon finding it more painful for himself than Guy-Man whose only reaction was a quick rub of the area.  “Drunk driving?!  Seriously?!” he continued on with his short tirade as he cradled his hand against his chest.  “Now look at you!”  
     “I’m alive, aren’t I?” Guy-Man spoke up, reaching a hand to his smooth face to wipe away the saliva that had settled upon his vision in little flecks.  As it was, he had no defense for himself…  This was his own fault after all.  
     “Yes!”  Paul fumbled with his words for a moment before finally deciding on “Fuck.” being an appropriate response to his relief.  He threw his arms around his older brother again in another tight hug, their parents watching in ostensive disbelief or dubiousness.  They looked to Thomas who did much the same as Guy-Man in raising his hand in a wave as “HELLO” lit up on his face.  
     “You… You really are robots?”  Guy-Man’s father asked, looking between the two of them.  
     “Unfortunately.” the shorter of the two responded, shrugging Paul off of him for the man to resume his place leaning against a wall.  “Things could have been worse.”  
     “You’re just a brain, then…?”  
     Uncomfortable at the reminder, Guy-Man crossed his arms tightly, but where most assumed it to be the obvious “I’m being stubborn” sort of arm-cross, Thomas saw it as more of a self-hugging gesture.  As his friend answered “Yeah.” he had to resist the urge to pull him to a real hug.  
     “This is just hard to take in.”  The man in question’s mother finally spoke up.  “I am happy that you are still alive.”  She stood and slowly walked towards him, her heels clicking on the hard floor and the only non-computerized noise in the room.  Unexpectedly, as Guy-Man opened his arms to possibly accept a hug from her, she took his big head between her hands and planted a kiss where his cheek would’ve been.  As his face betrayed his surprise, she left a lipstick-stain on his glass.  
     “Mom!”  He reached up and quickly started to rub the cosmetic from his face, but found that it only smeared.  Thomas, still standing in the doorway laughed at him as his mother grinned and began to giggle.  “An embarrassed robot, I didn’t know those existed.”  
     “I didn’t know robots existed…”  Guy-Man heard his father mutter from where he sat.  He ignored his old man in favor of his mother who was looking him up and down.  
     “At least you’re a _little_ taller.” she pointed out with a giggle.  
     “It’s his big head.” Thomas asserted, stepping closer and patting Guy-Man’s shiny helmet.  
     “Your head’s bigger than his, so why are you still the same height?”  
     Guy-Man made a robotic sniggering noise as Thomas removed his hand in favor of thoughtfully “scratching” at the back of his neck,  “I suppose they took that cloud of hair you had into account.” she continued on thoughtfully before waving the thought off in much the same manner that Guy-Man normally did with subjects once disinterest set in.  “You will always be a little dwarf compared to Thomas.” she told her son.  
     “Not helping, Mom!”  Guy-Man fussed as his internal cooling vents spouted hot air from the sides of his cranium.  
     “And now you don’t even have hope of getting taller.” Her giggles turned into real laughter then, Paul joining in from the sidelines.  
     “I’m not that short!  Stop it!”  Guy-Man had his fingers curled inwards and raised as if he wanted to grab and shake her.  Everyone knew he would never do such thing and was an empty threat.  
     “Still my same, sensitive boy.” She smiled at him, kissing his facial screen again before pulling close to him in a tight hug.  “And still so handsome.”  Naturally, he returned the hug, being very careful of her thin body and easily-bruised, human skin.  “Sweetheart…” She whispered into his audio sensor, “You really should consider moisturizing, your skin is terrible.” she joked.  
     “I’ll make sure to stop at a biker store the moment I’m out of the hospital…”  However, as they hugged and had their moment, Guy-Manuel was painfully aware of his father standing and shaking his head.  It wasn’t a humorous shake either.  He saw the frown and the creased brow of disappointment, he observed his hands wringing in a difficult decision and picked out the click of a tongue that signified a choice being reached.  Guy-Man didn’t like this choice, he knew he wouldn’t--his father wasn’t looking at him.  
     So, the robot-man-thing, did something he hadn’t in years; the gold and black fingers curled inward on his mother’s blouse and he lowered his head to rest in the crook of her neck.  Why exactly?  His father was saying nothing, he was leaving the room, giving his wife and first-born son a wide berth whilst shrugging past the silver gatekeeper that stood too close to the door.  
     Thomas said nothing, Paul left the room after his old man and Guy-Man cursed himself again.  He never felt more like a freak in his life as he began to notice how awkwardly his face fit against a once warm and familiar place.  What had once been something so comforting now accentuated his likeness to a robust, awkward puzzle piece.  
     “Guillaume,” his mother began, pushing him gently away, “I’ll be right back, I’ll go talk to him.” she assured, picking up her things before exiting the room and leaving Guy-Man alone, clutching at his own arms.  Silently, he peered around the room in front of him, none of them had left any of their things.  They didn’t have to return…  He wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t want to.  
    _I’m not human anymore._  He hugged himself tighter. _I can’t even hold them without having to be careful._  His fingers dug into his arm, he heard the groan of metal and felt the indications of occluded and snapped electric pathways, he felt pain.   _Why am I still alive?  
_      “Guy…”  
  _Why didn’t I just die?_ He wondered how easily he could rip his central nervous system out with this body.  Surely it wouldn’t take much with synthetic muscles.  He could just reach back and pull the brainstem out of his head and smash it…  His father could mourn over a dead son like every other parent and not have to deal with this anymore.  Or was that what he was already doing?  
     “ _Guy_ …”  
    _I should be dead.  But Mother…  But Paul…  But…_  “Thomas?”  He felt a pair of long arms around him and a chest pressed to his back.  His thermoreceptors told him Thomas was warm, his internal temperature being close to a human’s natural one, Guy-Man hated that such a passive realization brought forth so many other observations.  
     “Yes?”  
     “I want to be alone for now…”  The taller robot’s arms wrapped tighter around him, Guy-Man could even calculate their exact pounds-per-square-inch…  It disgusted him.  
     “I don’t want you to be alone.”  
     “Why the fuck not?”  Guy-Man pushed him away with a strong hand, “You can’t control me.”  
     “I don’t want to control you, but you’re upset.”  
     “I’m _allowed_ to be upset!  I’m allowed to have privacy!” The golden robot rounded on his friend.  
     “And I’m allowed to be concerned.”  
     “Stop trying to smother me and get out of my room.” Guy-Man ordered, sounding never more like a petulant child than in that moment.  
     “Talk to me later, then?” Thomas entreated, “When you feel better?”  
     “That won’t be for a long time.” the shorter man had gone back to his usual ritual of self-hugging, creating indents in his outsides and mangling the internal machinery of his arms.  
     “You know, I, uh…” he slumped his shoulders “MERDE”.  
     “What?”  
     “I was playing around with lyrics the other night.  I didn’t offer the track earlier because I’ve barely begun to make the lyrics fit.”  Thomas began, “I wanted to share some of the lyrics and get your opinions on them.”  
     “Later, Thomas.  Just leave.” Guy-Man waved him off with a flick of his wrist.  This time, however, Thomas listened to him, he left the room, closing the door behind him.  The worst part was, his solitude didn’t help him at all…  No, really, the saddest part _actually_ was that his doctor turned out to be his only returning visitor that evening.

\----

     The next morning rolled around and Jean finally left the hospital for some sleep.  He had spent the whole night up with his subject--er, patient--Guy-Manuel.  For some reason or another the silly cybernetic man had destroyed his upper arms through hand pressure.  He sometimes felt like that robot’s maid--he had just cleaned up the last mess he was, he shouldn’t have to do it for at least another couple months.  It was just too bad that he was emotionally inconsolable and that was the hardest thing ever to repair.  In spite of how _perfect_ he found the golden robot’s physique to be, he never listened to a thing he said and only ever wanted Thomas.  
     Thomas, what was so special about him anyway?  He still had other soft, vulnerable, fleshy parts and knew so little about the both of their functions.  He was imperfect on the grounds that physical humanity was more important than…  Oh, Guy-Manuel’s fixation on Thomas burned him more on days like the one he had just had.

  
  _“Just fix my arm, I don’t want to talk about it.”  Guy-Man mumbled as the doctor folded back the leather that encased his metal network.  
_ _“I’m here if you need an ear Mr. Homem-Christo…”  
_ _“Fix my arm, please.” the gold robot reiterated with no differing inflections of voice.  
_ _“I would even if you wouldn’t have asked me to.”  
_ _“You’re my doctor, I would expect it.”  
_ _"I’m here to help you, why can’t you at least be a bit more cordial with me?”  
_ _“Would you rather me be insincere?”  
_ _“I’ve done nothing but help you, Mr. Homem-Christo; aren’t you the slightest bit grateful for what I’ve done for you?”  
_ _Guy-Man held in what he really wanted to say and miraculously generated the more diplomatic of his options, “We have a business relationship, Doctor.”  
_ _"I can choose to stop serving you.”  
_ _“Then why didn’t you do already do that?”  
_ _Jean didn’t say anything more, in his mind, Guy-Man had sounded accusatory…  That was the last thing he needed._

  
     Why did his most perfect creation have to be the bratty one?  He supposed he was lucky it hadn’t been his cousin’s child, that would’ve been utterly wrong.  Speaking of whom, as he passed the silver robot’s door at approximately six AM, he supposed he should at least check on his status.  
     Hoping he was asleep, he knocked on the door and was disappointed with a greeting of “Enter.”  
     “Do you fancy this your office now, Thomas?”  Jean asked humorously as he walked in.  Thomas appeared to be reading one of the screens that held information on his current condition.  He was always reading something, Jean had found.  “What’s today’s subject?”  
     “P-Port-004, interesting what nerves its associated with.”  Thomas observed.  
     “What was I supposed to do with the nerves?  Leave them dead?”  Jean shrugged, feeling no shame.  
     “How is Guy this morning?”  
     “Asleep and recharging.” Jean replied in a curt voice.  
     “I can see you’re quite grateful for that.”  
     “His personality is a handful, I don’t know how you deal with him.”  
     “He’s usually better with me.”  Thomas pushed the screen away and sighed.  “I think he’s starting to notice that we’re a little different, though.”  
     “Oh?  How so?”  
     Thomas shrugged, “He asked me if I spoke yesterday…”  
     “You talk a lot already, I don’t see how that’s--”  
     “I think he could tell my voice comes from vocal vibrations when I accidentally whisper…  Or sigh…  Or something.”  
     “Are you supposing he hasn’t noticed before?”  Jean queried.  
     “Guy-Man can be dense…  He’s in his own head so often that I don’t always count on him noticing tiny, insignificant details unless he’s looking for them.  I told him we’re alike, so he takes me of my word.”  
     “If only he would do the same with me.” the doctor lamented quietly.  
     There was the sound of a smirk in Thomas’s voice, “You’re not me, he immediately suspects fraud with everything you say.  
     The doctor let out a dissatisfied grunt in agreement.  
     “If you can avoid it…”  Thomas began, relaxing back into his bed a little more, “Refrain from telling him too much about which of my original parts are left…”  
     “Would it really make a difference to him?”  
     “I don’t know…  And that’s the problem.  Guy is normally stable and this is understandably the most easily upset I’ve ever seen him and we’ve known each other for a long time.”  
     “Really?”  
     “He’s normally quite optimistic…  Spirited, er, well, _positively_ is what I mean.  I don’t want to add anymore stressors to what he’s already going through.”  
     “So, just don’t tell him you’re still partially human under there?” Jean clarified.  
     “No, please…  I think it might crush him.” the robot paused for a moment to think.  “No matter how insignificant our differences are.  In spite of still having to go through the same struggles he is, right now, he’s more focused on what makes people different rather than what makes us the same.”  
     “I can see that…”  The doctor sucked on his tongue.  “I’ll make sure to remember that.”  
     “Was there anything that you wanted this morning, Jean?”  
     “No, just checking on your condition before I go home.”  
     “Oh, well, I’m feeling fine for now.” Thomas assured, “Maybe the nurses will let us have some time together unattended today.”  
     “Perhaps.” The doctor shrugged, “Have a good day, though, Thomas.  I have some things to catch up on at home before I go to sleep.” he bid his relative.  He didn’t really hear or care all that much about Thomas’s response, too caught up as he was in his own fantasies as he left the room and eventually the hospital.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

     Guy-Man was convinced he would never grow used to the instantaneous popping out of dreams into total awareness.  He could keep his view turned off, but it didn’t at all help him in the area of falling back asleep.  He was either asleep or he wasn’t and that sucked a lot.  Reaching back, he unlocked the power conduit from the back of his neck and sat it aside before rolling to lay on his back and stare at the ceiling.  Making a mechanized sigh, he realized that he wasn’t feeling much better than he was the day prior.  He knew he could place a call to his mother or Paul to see how his father was doing, but he somehow likewise knew that that wouldn’t go well.  Moreover, not even his doctor or nurse were present to do something unspeakable to keep his mind off of things.  
     Swinging his legs out of the bed, he contemplated putting clothes on, but he didn’t really see a need for it; considering his “offensive” anatomy had been obliterated and replaced with leather and ports between his legs, it was pointless.  
     Pointless.  
     That word…  It described so many things to him.  He was a brain in a synthetic body, what was the point in keeping him alive?  He wasn’t important, he was a nobody.  Going back into the world didn’t have much of a point either.  He was no-longer able to experience it the same way everyone else could.  All the relationships he had cultivated before this didn’t matter.  Except maybe Thomas.  
     He felt empty.  There was nothing.  
      _Nothing but Thomas._  
     He finally stood, knowing his body should creak, his spine should ache, his legs should protest to standing after extended bed rest and the lack of sensation made him nauseous.  Without a stomach, however, this only caused further sensation confusion.  Dizzy, yes, he felt dizzy.  At least that was normal.  
     With a robotically precise motion, he tested his repaired arm.  Everything worked perfectly.  There was no pain, there hadn’t been pain while he destroyed it yesterday either.  The utter lack of sensation was revolting.  The arm moved because he told it to, but he felt no resistance of gravity or roll of muscle over bone and under skin.  There was just…  There was fucking nothing!  
     He was a spectator that controlled a puppet, he was not himself.  And therefore, how could he ever be real?

  
     “My fu…  What are you doing?!”  Guy-Man yelped upon entering Thomas’s room unannounced.  
     “Oh.  Good Morning.”  Thomas’s body responded in a slow computer voice that was not even an approximation of Thomas’s.  “I Am Sorry.” the robot apologized as he tossed a blanket over his open pelvis that had a plethora of cords and wires leading out of it and up to hook into a bedside computer and the ports of his neck.  
     “Thomas?”  The golden robot questioned in disbelief, closing the door behind himself to lean back against it warily.  
     “Yes?  What Is It?”  
     “What are you doing?!”  Guy-Manuel raised his hands and made desperate gestures in his general direction.  
     “Interfacing With My Internal Conversion Processor.”  Thomas raised a jerking arm to type something on the screen next to him.  “Testing Port Functionality.”  
     “Why are you talking like that?”  Maybe Thomas didn’t look human, but there were some comforting things that Guy-Man had become attached to.  The smooth, faux-human movements that they were both capable of was one of them.  Another was the nearly real voices generated inside; these things, while still synthetic and unreal, were the last signs of their origins as living, breathing beings.  
     “Personally Accessing And Allowing For System Tweaks Requires Processing Power To Be Diverted From Less Important Functions.  My Voice Generator For Example, As Well As My Movement Naturalizer.” the computer responded.  
     “Can you stop…?”  
     “I Am In The Middle Of Something.”  
     “I’ll leave, then.”  Turning to exit the room, Guy-Man’s hand rested on the knob as Thomas asked “Is Something Wrong?”  
     Guy-Man shrugged, resting his forehead against the heavy wood of the door.  
     “What Is It?”  
     The other man didn’t answer, leaning further onto the door.  He wanted to leave and be without this awful strangeness, but where else could he go that he wouldn’t feel his hollowness?  
     “Talk To Me.”  
     “Then talk like a person.  I can’t stand this.”  
     “My Voice Bothers You?”  
     Silence.   _It doesn’t sound like you.  You’re a machine.  Not my friend._  
     “Why?”  
     “Does it matter?”  
     “I Am Still Me, Guy.”  
      _Even my name sounds disgusting._  “I’m sorry I interrupted whatever you were playing around with, but I want to talk to you.”  
     “Hang On.”  
     Hearing some clicking behind him as well as muffled noises of other movements, Guy-Man stole a tentative glance over his shoulder to Thomas logging out of his interface.  Thomas reached into the cavity his processor rested in and plucked a series of connectors out before reaching back to unplug their corresponding ends from his neck.  With a few rhythmic taps, the opening to the computer closed and Thomas folded the leather and insulation back into place.  Another telltale zip of metal and the latch of a lock, Guy-Man turned back around to face his friend as he tied his cluster of cables into a neat, single knot; and, peculiarly, in a practiced motion, Thomas quickly stored the knot of cables effectively within the underside lip of his bed's frame with none of the ends in view.  
     “What’s wrong?” Thomas queried, reaching to his ankles to pull his jeans up around his waist and buckle them.  
     Hearing Thomas’s re-tuned voice generated a wave of relief so powerful that Guy-Man, having no other way to express the emotion, release a long sigh.  
     “Are you okay?”  The taller man strode from his bed, his long green shirt remaining unbuttoned and moving in gentle waves at his hips.  “Guy-Manuel?”  
     Guy-Man at last lifted his gaze from Thomas’s beltline to his face and casually leaned on the door at his back.  “I don’t know.” he at last answered his friend’s several times reiterated question.  “After yesterday…  I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.”  
     “Your old man will come around.” Thomas encouraged, his own tiredness evident in his voice.  “It’s all just a shock for now.  Everything will work out.”  
     “Do you really believe that?”  
     Thomas almost didn’t have the energy to lie.  “Yes.”  
     “Thomas…  Can you do something for me?”  
     “Sure, uh, what?”  
     “Can you hit me?”  
     “Uh…  Why would I do that?” his head fell slightly to the side in confusion, a scroll of “???” on his facial readout.  
     “Because maybe I’ll be able to feel something.”  
     “ERROR.” Thomas stuttered for a few moments, “Are you asking me to hurt you?”  
     “Yes.  Dumbass.”  
     “As if.” Thomas waved him off with an approximate scoff.  
     “Really, Thomas…”  
     “You’re straight buggin’ if you think I’m actually going to try to hit you.”  
     “What if I hit you first?” Quickly raising his arms, Guy-Man shoved his friend in the chest halfway across the room.  
     Stumbling and steadying himself against the bedside table, Thomas remained as nonplussed as always, “Cut it out, man.”  
     “Hit me back.”  
     “Look, you need to step off and chill out.” Thomas warned, taking a few steps towards him and raising his hands.  
     “Hit me!” Guy-Man ordered, rushing into his personal bubble and giving him another rough shove, this time to the side and into the wall.  
     Thomas cursed for the pain in his damaged human parts, Guy-Man wanted to fight and there didn’t seem to be anything to do about it.  However, Thomas recognized that he was unlikely to win; after all, Guy-Man didn’t know how squishy and breakable he was in comparison.  Perhaps he could at least talk him down a little.  
     “I sometimes want to go postal too, Guy-Man, but now really isn’t the time.”  
     “ _Please_ , Thomas.”  Guy-Man was before his face again, looking up at him with his expressionless and colorless visage.  He detected minute tremors in the robot’s shoulders; was this rage keeping him from crying?  “I don’t feel…  I feel nothing.  Nothing is real,” when he lifted his hand, Thomas flinched as it ran slowly down his arm. “I’m not real.  I need to feel something, feel…   _Pain_.”  
     “You can’t ask me to hurt you, Guy-Man…” he quietly asserted, “UNFAIR”.  
     “I was wondering if I took a scalpel to my arm, if I would feel the cuts.  Or if I would just sever circuitry and feel nothing.”  
     “Guy…  Did you…?”  As the hand on his arm reached his wrist, Thomas gingerly took it into his own hand.  He tried not to think about the intimate position it put them in, but he felt the inside of his helmet heat up all the same.  At least Guy-Man couldn’t see him blush.  
     “I’m too afraid of the answer…  I can’t do it myself…”  
     “What makes you think I would want to?”  
     “Because I need your help.”  
     Thomas let out his breath silently and looked away from him.  Several words flitted across his face, all of them disappearing and reappearing in different configurations too quickly for any human to read.  This did not include robotic humans however.  
     “I know you think I’m wacked-out right now and you’re salty with me over all of this--”  
     “No.” Thomas stopped him, “I’m not mad at you.”  
     “But you do think I’m--”  
     “Yes, you’re freaking out.”  Thomas let out a noise and figured if he was going to give Guy-Man what he wanted, he needed to raise that ire again, somehow.  “What you’re asking me to do is straight up ridiculous.”  
     Guy-Man looked away and folded his arms over his chest, “So, you’re not going to help me?”  
     “I’m going to, but you can’t get angry with me.”  
     “What?”  As soon as Guy-Man returned his gaze to Thomas’s face he felt a sudden sharp, biting pain in his side.  The force of the punch tripped him off his feet and sent him to the floor with an almighty thud.  “Fuuuuuuuuck!” he hissed, surprised at the very real feeling.  Then, he laughed, “Do it again!”  
     “You’re trippin’, once is enough.”  
     “Do it again!”  
     “No!”  
     Guy-Man was standing again, ramming him into the wall.  Thomas gasped at the pain, hoping he didn’t hear him.  At this time, they both became aware of frantic knocking at the door.  Someone jiggled the knob and Thomas asked “When did you lock the door?”  
     “Angry?”  
     “No.”  All the same, Thomas wheeled back his fist and punched him square in the chest, sending Guy-Man nearly flying backwards and into the bedside table.  
     “Feels like you’re salty.” The gold robot sat up and rolled his shoulders, happy at the annoying protests of his machinery.  He let out a noise of merriment as he stood, but Thomas, in a display of his own speed and coordination planted his foot directly onto his face.  Guy-Man’s vocalizer malfunctioned in a crackling roar of pain as the soft metals that composed his head dented and fractured.  “ **Ueeeeaaaggggghhhhhrrrrnnnnngggssssssssssskk**.” Guy-Man tried to speak, his senses overwhelmed with unexpectedly real agony in his head.  
     He heard Thomas curse above him and rush to unlock the door of the room, “I’m sorry, he--”  Thomas went silent as there was a crash to the floor.  Guy-Man sat up, his view still on and not the least bit tarnished by the pain he felt.  Thomas was being forced to the floor by three larger men.  Somewhere Guy-Man knew that was impossible if he had had the ability to “break” his head, but certain sensations disallowed him from consciously assessing that.  Instead, instinctive relief sent him to drop back to the floor as a nurse caught his helmet.  
     “Call the doctor!” the nurse ordered as Guy-Man’s pain successfully enveloped all of his perception.

\----

     “I’m gone not _even_ seven hours and you two already break each other again.”  Jean grumbled as he soldered two broken pieces of the sedated gold robot’s circuitry back together.  “I shouldn’t even let you be in the room with what you did to him, you brute.”  
     “I told you, he asked me to do it.”  
     Jean scoffed, “I’m sure he didn’t mean this.”  
     “No…" Thomas started, ashamed of his internal origins of brutality towards his best friend.  "But aren’t you the least bit concerned that he wanted me to hurt him at all?”  
     “He seems the melancholy type.  I somewhat assumed it a natural-occurring phenomenon in him.” Jean shrugged as he rolled his eyes behind his facemask.  
     “Never.” Thomas was revolted by the very thought that his friend would ever hit low valleys so deep that he would be unable to speak to him about it.  Sure, his friend wasn’t pogo-happy all the time and was often quiet and reserved with his feelings, but when things got bad he always said something.  
     “Perhaps a manifest withdrawal from illicit substances.”  
     “I think he needs therapy.”  Thomas disagreed with a headshake.  
     Jean sighed and rolled his eyes again, “Therapy for a robot, that’s a new one.”  
     “He’s human, Jean.  You might want to be like this, but he never asked for it.”  
     Jean said nothing, continuing his repairs uninterrupted.  
     “He said he feels unreal.”  Thomas continued.  “Is there some sort of…  Uh…  I don’t know?  What would you call it…?”  Jean’s silence only further told Thomas how utterly uninterested he was in the concept.  “Like, is there a kind of therapy for his human senses?”  
     “None that I can think of.” The doctor flatly answered.  
     “Our ports are all linked up with our nerves that have nowhere to go though, right?”  His cousin’s total lack of helpful input was beginning to frustrate him, “Could we hook them into a computer and stimulate them that way?  The impulses have to be interpreted somehow by the converter in our groins, right?  So--”  
     “What you are supposing is impossible.  At best it would cause great pain.”  
     “What about the ones hooked to our pleasure center?”  
     “It would fry your brains.”  
     “Then why give us the ports?!  What is the point of-of-of giving us this false hope of feeling something we never will again on our own?!”  
     “Because there was nothing else to do with them!”  Jean set aside his kit and pulled the facemask up to view his computer-enhanced cousin.  “I don’t want to hear anymore of this nonsense.”  
     “What are our ports meant to do?”  
     “Nothing.”  
     “Bullshit.”  
     “Language.” the older man chastised.  
     “You don’t do unnecessary.” Thomas pointed out, “They are meant for something.  It’s evident in our blueprints.”  
     “I couldn’t just excise them, it would’ve been a waste.”  
     “I tried something today.”  Thomas began from a new angle.  
     “What was that?”  
     “I hooked the port near my nutrition cartridges into the computer in my room.”  
     “And?”  
     “I really didn’t know what I was doing, but I sent some information, some nonsense.”  
     “What happened?”  
     “I tried to throw up; it made me feel hungry and sick.”  
     Jean pulled his face mask down over his face again and continued his work on Guy-Man.  “Don’t do those things without me around.”  
     “Why not?”  
     “There could be unexpected consequences by an amateur playing with what he doesn’t understand.”  
     “You don’t seem surprised though.”  
     At that moment, Jean pushed a button, “Nurse, Mr. Bangalter needs to return to his room now for rest, would you mind coming to escort him?”  
     “I’m not tired.”  
     “You need to rest all the same.  You’ve exerted yourself enough for one day.”  Before Thomas could answer with his incredulity again, his nurse arrived, “Lorraine, would you mind giving Mr. Bangalter a sponge bath as well?  If you aren’t too busy.”  
     “No, I have some time.” she responded.  
     “Also, check to see how those hematomas are doing.  Mr. Homem-Christo really was rough.”  
     “Yes, doctor.”  she gave her charge a tap on his shoulder, gathering his attention, “C’mon, you must be tired.”  
     Shooting Jean one more glance, Thomas walked with her out of the room.

  
     “Is something bothering you, Thomas?” Lorraine asked, carefully cleaning the junction of metal, leather and skin that ran a jagged line across Thomas’s discolored and mangled chest.  
     The man shook his large head, “I’m unsure if I can trust you.”  
     “After everything I’ve given you?” She indignantly supplied sitting away from him.  
     “It’s not that I don’t trust _you_ , but…  I wouldn’t want to get you fired.  You don’t want to be fired either and if it comes between me and your job, your job wins.”  
     She shrugged her shoulders, “You’re right.” and she continued to clean him, being careful of the swollen, palm-shaped bruises on what was left of his shoulders.  “Between you and me though, I think Jean’s a creep.”  
     “Yeah…  Between you and me.”

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

      Who was touching him…?  Better yet…   _Why_ were they touching him?  He felt a hand drag down his side and over his buttocks, their fingers swirled around on the healthy mound of his butt for a bit.  It tickled…  He tried to move, but found that he couldn’t…  Before panicking he quickly ran a diagnostic, which, it kind of freaked him out that he could do that anyway.  It appeared that his sensory conversion processor--the section in charge of converting the efferent impulses of motor neurons into code that told his machine parts to move anyway--had been temporarily disabled…  
     The hand on his body rubbed up and down his legs again, clutching at the leather of his ass and even slapped it…  Upon trying to voice his concern over this issue…  Wishing for the owner of the hand he couldn’t see to cease and desist the molesting of his rump; Guy-Man realized he had no sense of his vocalizer in that moment either.  Quickly he ran a diagnostic and found that it was covered by that same section of the conversion processor that had been disabled.  
     There was an airy moan from behind him...  
     Now it was safe to panic.  
     “FUCK” Flashed frantically on Guy-Man’s facial screen.  “FUCK”, “FUCK”, “FUCK”, “FUCK”, “FUCK”.  
     He felt woozy…  Kind of like being high again.  
     Oh, that was nice…  
     Darkness.

\----

    Sitting up with a start, Guy-Man panned his vision around the room, looking for any visitors.  Finding none, but all the same needing to demand some sort of explanation from someone, he threw the blankets from his fabricated body and stormed from the room.  With swift, albeit, controlled knocks, he requested access to Thomas’s room.  
    “Come in!”  His friend’s voice came back at him, he immediately pushing the door open and hoping he wasn’t walking in on something else awkward as he had the day prior.  As it turned out, no he wasn’t, Thomas was sitting up in his bed, the computer pulled over to him and he reading something that looked like a complicated technical manual.  “You look well.”  Thomas commented, his shoulder sparking with pain as he turned around to face him.  “Sorry about the helmet.”  
    “Yeah, whatever, I asked you to do it.” Guy-Man waved him off, “But I think some pervert is coming into my room while I’m asleep!”  
    “???” scrolled by on Thomas’s screen, “And doing what?  Jiggling your circuits?”  Thomas humorously offered, sliding off his bed to stand.  Yet again, he wondered why his friend was incapable of putting on pants, but he was in the habit of not worrying about it now and it would require a lot of teeth-pulling and arm-twisting to break it.  
    “I don’t know!”  Guy-Man gesticulated his disgust, “!” flashing just as frantically on his face.  By this sort of behavior, maybe something actually was wrong and Guy-Man wasn’t playin’.  
    “Why do you think someone’s eh, hehe, molesting you?”  
    “Because I woke up with all of my motor driver-things disabled and I couldn’t talk and I--”  
    “Motor _neurons_ , first of all--”  
    “Okay, motor _moron_ ,” Guy-Man cut him off, doing the shoulder-shrug and head-tilt of eye rollage.  “But I heard someone beside me!  And they were touching me and…  And moaning…”  
    Thomas shook his head, “Are you sure you weren’t just dreaming?  You still have those, y’know…”  
    “Thomas, this was not a fucking dream!  I’m serious!”  Guy-Man gave him a shove to indicate this being not a laughing matter.  Thomas meanwhile held his mouth as shut as he could to stifle any hiss or yelp of pain as he felt more subcutaneous capillaries release blood under his skin.  
    “Fine, okay, just stop shoving me.  I don’t want to have to kick you to the curb again.” he suppressed his urge to rub the abused section of his body, but he knew better than to show signs of human pain.  It was one thing to mimic it as Guy-Man sometimes did, but pain for them did not linger without damaged tissue to prolong signals of grievances.  One day he was going to have to tell Guy-Man how squishy he was before he killed him.  
    Guy-Man folded his arms and huffed, “Why would I make this up?”  
    “I can’t think of any logical reasons, so I get it.”  And Thomas would be lying if he said he didn’t know anyone who would want to do it, but telling Guy-Man that would only complicate their treatment.  It also seemed quite unlikely that Jean would do such a lewd thing to someone who was already a very uncooperative patient.  “I’m unsure exactly what you want me to--”  
    “Can’t you just move into my room already?” Guy-Man tersely cut him off.  
    “You know the medical staff aren’t exactly behind us on that.” Thomas pointed out.  
    “Well, why not?”  
    “Because you and I have a lot of complicated equipment that they don’t want to have to move.  Do you think _every_ room in this hospital is equipped to handle one of these?”  Thomas posed, reaching back to his bed to pick up the large power conduit, the size six-gage cord of which seemed to fed directly into a power source inside of the wall rather than a plug.  
    Guy-Man scoffed, “They made it work for one in each room…”  
    “Do you have any grasp on how electricity works?”  
    “Sort of…”  
    “Then you’d know that considering how much juice you and I consume it wouldn’t be good for the hospital to have us both using the same isolated circuit.  Not unless we wanted to cause a power surge and black out the whole ward.”  Thomas chuckled.  
    “It could be cool.  We could play a game of who’s up my butt until the lights come back on.”  
    “You’re intent, aren’t you?”  
    “Do you think it’s the doctor?”  
    Thomas made a computerized humming as he thought, “After all the trouble you’ve put him through?”  
    “I dunno, maybe he’s the hate-date kinda guy.”  Guy-Man waved his wrist, pacing over to the heavily tinted window to look out into the world he hadn’t been in in…  Well, a long time.  
    “I doubt it’s him.”  No, he didn’t.  
    “Are you lying to me?” he asked, peering over his shoulder, his black visor as unreadable as his old icy stare used to be.  
    “I just don’t see a reason why he’d do that.”  
    “Humans are freaks, that’s why.”  Guy-Man hadn’t even realized how much that statement had distanced himself from his own kind until after its utterance, “I mean…  You know, people are.”  
    “I know what you meant.” Thomas reassured, “Freaks like you and me.”  
    “Nobody’s a freak like you and I.” Guy-Man reflected pessimistically.  
    “But at least we have each other, yeah?”  Thomas shrugged, a small heart displaying itself.  
    “Hmph, yeah.”  Guy-Man turned away from him and resumed his lustful gaze out the window.  
    “Can’t you just be happy with what you have?” Thomas accused, he hadn’t been much for making any given emotional situation worse for Guy-Man, but to say that he hadn’t…  That he hadn’t reacted negatively to all of this either was nothing farther from the truth.  
    “What _do_ I have?”  Guy-Man interrogated, the sneer of human lips and gritted incisors clear in the synthetic voice.  
     “You’re alive!”  Thomas reminded.  
     “Pssh, as if this is fucking ‘alive’.”  
     “You have…  You have me…” he shrugged, hating the way that Guy-Man kept his back to him.  “Guy-Man, doesn’t that…  Doesn’t that _fucking_ mean anything to you?!”  There was a coldness in the pit of a stomach he did not have seeing no reaction in Guy-Man.  “I’ve been doing nothing this whole time but-but trying to make you feel better!  I’ve said it before, everything you’re going through, I am too!  Am I just some fucking laundry-line for you to come hang your shit on?”  
    Guy-Man was still silent.  
    “Dude, you said that I was your bruise, but I don’t think you meant it the way I did.”  
    “You’re being so stupid right now.” the short robot sniped.  
    “I’m just this thing you press on when you want to feel something; it’s convenient and it’s there…  Guy, I hate talking about this, but I don’t have anyone else either.  How many times has my family come to see me and they’ve known this whole time?  My own--my own girlfriend, who’s been my friend for years doesn’t want anything to do with me and the _last_ person I have, the one person I would want most to support me…  All I can see is that he doesn’t understand how crucially this has all fucked me up too.” he felt something leaking underneath his helmet.  Crying actually hurt, the salt stung his skin and what was worse was he couldn’t even reach up to wipe the tears away.  “Please, for five minutes stop all of your defensive bullshit and be real with me.” There definitely were some advantages to not having an organic voice, no telltale quake of tears.  “Does my existence here at all mean shit to you?  Or would you rather be doing this alone?  Rather me be dead than ‘alive’?”  
     “Of course it does.” Guy-Man finally spoke.  “Way to be selfish and make this all about you.”  
     “Guy!”  
     “You’re an indispensable part of my life, Thomas; I hate that you’re experiencing everything I am.  I want you to be human.”  Guy-Man had to stop to search for what he wanted to say.  “As happy as I am that you’re here, that we have each other, I’d still rather be dead than face this conceivable eon of detachment from my own world.”  the other man spun on his foot, readying to leave the room.  “It’s really not you…”  He took a few steps towards him, “I can’t even feel comfortable just being myself--and you, being your logical, laid-back, shooting the breeze self just lays down and accepts this shit like it’s nothing”  
     “Guy-Man I had over a month without you…  And I _had_ no one else.  I didn’t lay down and accept it, but there’s nothing I can do about how I am and I just want to make it easier for you to see.”  
     The other robot rolled his shoulders and shook his head, heading for the door.  
     “Please don’t leave me…”  Thomas requested quietly, Guy-Man stopping in his footsteps, seeming to wait for Thomas to give him a legitimate reason.  “Do you want to…  Could we try making some music today?”  
     “Why not?”

  
     Compared to the last time the two had experimented with their sound-replication abilities together, their second time was a lot smoother.    There were still some parts of the process that Guy-Man resisted, but he couldn’t say it was an altogether unpleasant experience.  He even managed to find some comedy in a few of the samples Thomas played back to him and found a quiet enjoyment in the production of their current track.  He doubted anything would come of it, but Thomas said he would probably work on some lyrics.  Most importantly, however, somehow he forgot the emptiness he was feeling for awhile.  
     Nonetheless, Thomas still seemed somber in comparison to his usual attitude.  Guy-Man knew the reason for it, but found that he personally couldn’t rise to the occasion to combat his own emotional ineptitude.  Or rather, his ineptness at _conveying_ the proper ones to his friend.  Annoyance and indifference had always been his forte, unless he was drunk or high.  He considered it a complete disaster that he could no longer use either substance to get past the defensive barriers he had built up over the years.  Thomas was the last person in the world that deserved to hit those walls.  
     “I had a dream about you a couple nights ago.”  Thomas spoke up from his place on the floor as Guy-Man was re-processing some sound bytes.  
     “Did you?”  Guy-Man tore himself away from his work for just a moment to pay attention to his friend sitting across from him.  
     “It was kind of cool, actually; we weren’t robots in it.”  
     “I thought you said this was about me?”  he theatrically motioned to himself, hoping to get some kind of chuckle out of Thomas.  
     “Yeah, but where do you go that I often don’t want to?”  the quirk of an eyebrow and a smirk could be heard in his voice and Guy-Man nodded in acceptance; he would’ve been smirking too.  
     “How did this dream go?”  
     “W-Well…”  
     “Like that?”  Guy-Man chuckled.  
     “Stop it, let me talk.”  
     “If I’m beating you to the punch for once, it must really have been a good one.”  the gold robot continued, prodding his friend’s shoulder playfully.  
     Thomas released a frustrated noise before finally articulating himself, “We were at this party,” he began, “And we were dancing, you actually had clothes on, you know, such a rare thing these days--”  
     “All of my ‘offensive’ anatomy is gone!  Why can’t you or that doctor leave me alone?!”  Guy-Man crossed his arms over his chest.  
     “Because we figured you’d still rather wear them out of habit.” Thomas chuckled, lifting Guy-Man’s spirits all the more.  
     “When have I ever liked wearing pants?” he gesticulated at his crossed legs before resting his arms there.  
     “Good point.” he nodded through a bit more of chuckling, “Okay so, here’s where stuff gets good.”  
     Guy-Man leaned in as if he were a co-conspirator in some great plot.  
      “Uh, well…”  Was now really the time to be talking about this?  “We’re dancing and, uh…” Thomas found himself quite suddenly embarrassed by all of this.  He knew Guy-Man would find this funny, but the more he thought about it, the less funny it became to him.  “I-I put my hands on your hips.” He suddenly had no desire to lift his view from the ground and was it always so hot inside his helmet?  “A-And, you-you…”  Deep breath, let it out “You leaned against me, your-your, uhm, hands on my thighs.”  Guy-Man wasn’t laughing, he was just staring blankly at him.  This really _hadn’t_ been a good idea.  Nope, quite the opposite; well, as long as he had condemned himself, it wouldn’t matter much just how far he went with it.  “And after some somewhat, erm, _intimate_ dancing, you turned around to face me and put your arms around my waist and--”  
     “I’m going to stop you there.”  Guy-Man intervened, not sure at all how to handle this.  His internal cooling fans whirred in his audio receptors and the vent in his chest in charge of what he had for a circulatory system felt like it was going to overheat.  “I think you need to focus less on your silly dreams and more on making music.”  
     “Y-Yeah… Okay…”  
     They were both silent for a time, the air thick with awkwardness.  Thomas turned out to be the one to break it after Guy-Man began to get stir-crazy.  “Did this never happen?”  
     “It did.” the other man nodded, turning his head back to face him, “And it’s fine.”  
     “I-It is?”  
     “Of course it is, it’s you.  But like I said, try focusing on other things.”  
     “Like music…” Thomas supplied, downtrodden.  
     “And figuring out who that pervert was.”  Instead of leaving as he wanted to, Guy-Man resumed rearranging the music file in his processor and as he played back the newest arrangement, a scroll of “!” appeared on Thomas’s face.  “What?”  Guy-Man questioned, stopping his playback.  
     “Lyrics.” there was a grin in that simple word.  
     “You want to add them?”  
    “No, I want you to.”  
    “W-What?”  
    “My voice is too nasally, you can--”  
    “You don’t even have a real voice!  You can get rid of the nasally-ness if you want!”  
    “You still have a better robot voice than me.”  
    “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?!  I sound like me!”  
     “Yeah, but who ever heard of a nasally, inarticulate robot?”  
    “Again!  You don’t have a real voice!  Tune yours to sound like me!”  
     “You know it doesn’t work like that.” Thomas gave him a playful shove, “I’d need Jean to get out his kit and he’d have to open up my vocalizer and I really want to get this done _now_.”  
     Guy-Man huffed, his arms up around his chest again.  
     “And all of this recording back and forth of the track is starting to degrade the quality, can we _please_ just trade the file?”  Seeing Guy-Man’s stonewall attitude Thomas shrugged, leaning up into Guy-Man’s lap into his face.  The other man startled and jumped back, but wasn’t able to go much of anywhere with Thomas’s hands pressing down on his thighs, “Unless you want to sit _this_ close to me to do it.”  
     “You’re asking me to do too many things here!”  Guy-Man darted his view between Thomas’s hands on his legs and back to his face, “Get off me!”  
     “Oh it would be the worst thing in the world for you to compromise and do some self-improvement.”  Thomas pushed, sitting back on his own butt on the hospital tile.  
     “I’m sorry I’m a fallible human, you fucking automaton.”  
     Thomas sighed, gripping the brow of his visor, “You don’t have to _sing_ , Guy, I know that’s why you don’t want to do it, but considering that we don’t need a real vocoder around it makes things a _lot_ easier for you to just talk the words at me and I can edit them from there.”  
     Guy-Man shrugged, “That just sounds…  I don’t know?  Cheating?”  
     “We’ve done it before, ‘Teachers’ ring a bell?”  It had been more than that too.  “You just talked then too.”  
     “The tune we have now though--‘Teachers’ was different, it was meant to be spoken-word, even if not exactly all of it is--I don’t think it’s going to work that well.”  
      “At least we can say we tried.”  
      Doing the closest robotic equivalent to a resigned sigh, Guy-Man spoke, “Okay, what were those lyrics again?” There was almost a challenge in his voice, as if he knew already what had just begun to dawn on Thomas.  
     “I uh…”  
     “Need some time to ‘refine’ those fine gems?”  Guy-Man teased, raising a hand as if swishing a glass of expensive wine between his fingers.  
     “Yeah, they’re a bit like crude oil right now.” Thomas chuckled.  
     “Aren’t you cute?  A robot making oil jokes.” he tittered.  
     “Well, I know I want the words ‘work it harder’, ‘make it better’ and ‘our work is never over’.”  
     Guy-Man snorted with a shrug, “That last one, especially.” After a short pause whilst Thomas was still thinking things over, Guy-Man added, “And you want me to speak English?  That’s, again, something else you’re better at…”  
     “Just over-pronounce the words and you’re fine.”  
     “That’s eloquent.”  
     “Shut it, it’s what we have to work with right now.”  
     “We’re going to spend hours on this today, aren’t we?”  Guy-Man questioned, unfolding his legs to bend them in a more upright position; he put his arms around his knees and leaned forward on them.  
     “Better than being molested or medical test, right?”  
     “Truth, brother.” Guy-Man agreed with an ironic tone.  
     “Would you rather this be faster and a slap-dash job?”  
     “Are you serious about this track suddenly?  Of all the ones we’ve been working on this simple, _repetitive_ …”  As if finally hit by the same things that Thomas saw potential in, he paused to think for a second.  “Okay, yeah, I can go for it.  Even _if_ the lyrics work out, it’s still far from done.”  
     “I was hoping you’d say that.”  
     “I’m a musician too.” he sniffed haughtily, “Well, when I feel like it.”  Thomas chortled at his friend’s finally returning self-assuredness.  “How do you want me to say them?”  
     “Just play the track back to yourself and I’ll trust you to pick spots for them.”  Thomas shrugged, “We don’t even have all of them yet, so it doesn’t really matter.  We might have to change some parts of it later to fit the lyrics better.”  
      “Being honest, Guy-Man, I really would rather you speak the words into my audio sensors.” Thomas raised his finger to tap his “ear”.  Finally rising to the occasion to joke, Guy-Man quickly untangled himself from his new position to parody Thomas’s earlier assault of his lap.  
     “Is _this_ close enough?” he vocalized into the sensor.  
     “Y-Yeah, that’s fine…”  
    “ _Harder_ ,” he teasingly ‘moaned’, “ _Faster_!”  
     “S-Stop that!” Thomas raised a hand to smack the side of Guy-Man’s head.  “Though…”  
     “Harder, better, faster?”  Guy-Man questioned, wondering if it felt as right to Thomas to say the sequence.  
     “Yeah, that sounds pretty good.  Hold on for a second.”  Thomas accessed his internal recording functions, “Go a head and speak the words.”  
     Before even one syllable of the chosen lyrics left Guy-Man’s vocalizer, the door to Thomas’s room opened.  Considering the position they had been in, Guy-Man wasted no time throwing himself away from Thomas, re-crossing his legs on the floor.  
      A nurse, not one neither Thomas nor Guy-Man recognized peeked his head in “I’ll have you both know, we do have cameras set-up at the nurse’s station after last time you two were alone…  So if there’s anything you don’t want us seeing, that’s not going to happen.” he explained haltingly, “We would love to give you your privacy, but Doctor Bangalter is stressed enough as it is and doesn’t need to be called-in on anymore emergency repair orders…”  
     Guy-Man spluttered for a few seconds before responding with, “We were recording a track!”  
     The nurse nodded and he shrugged, “We cannot be too careful, Mr. de Homem-Christo.  As things were…  We weren’t exactly worried about you two _fighting_ again, but there are certain things that most of us don’t want to see.”  
     “Excuse you!” Guy-Man shouted a wide “X” displaying itself brightly on his face.  
     “Just a precaution, there was more than just me who thought the same thing, so keep that in mind.”  
     Guy-Man huffed and scooted further away from Thomas.  
     “On another note, Mr. de Homem-Christo, I have an order from your doctor to convey.”  
     “What is it?”  
     “I was asked to speak to you in private.”  
     “Thomas isn’t anybody, tell me.”  Guy-Man cheekily pressed, chuckling when Thomas gave him a slap to his shoulder.  
     “Orders are orders.” the nurse explained, clearly knowing how difficult a patient Guy-Man was even if they had never met before.  Thomas imagined that now that an entire nurse’s station knew about their existence that the whole ward must’ve known that Guy-Man was a terror.  
     “Then my doctor can shove it up his--”  
     Thomas slapped him again.  Harder.  
     “Ow!” he turned to snarl at him, but before anything came out of his “mouth”, Thomas shook his head at him.  Releasing all of the angry tension from his shoulders Guy-Man grunted, “I’ll be in in a second, nurse.”

  
     “What was so damn important that Thomas couldn’t hear?”  Guy-Man immediately cut to the chase once his room door had closed.  
     “It’s nothing against him personally, I was just given orders not to speak of this with any others around.  Patient confidentiality and all.”  
     “Considering he’s the only fucking person here who talks to me who isn’t on staff and would _therefore_ already know this order as well, it is something against him personally.”  
     The nurse had no response for that, “Mr. de Homem-Christo, the doctor would like for me to inform you that he has set-up an experimental procedure for you to undergo.”  
     “If it has nothing to do with making me human again, I don’t give a shit.”  
     There was a sudden tic in the man’s mouth…  Without being able to help it, Guy-Man zoomed his vision in on the tic, he examined it as well as a twitch in the man’s eyes.  Running through all sorts of scenarios in his inner processor the only message that was sent back to his brain for interpretation was “Why is he trying not to laugh?”, Guy-Man was far too freaked out by his own computations to even begin to ask that same question internally and just returned his vision to its normal resting state.  He shivered for a second, the nurse’s expression changing to concern.  
     “Is everything all right?”  
     “Yes… Fine…  What was the suggestion from Frankenstein?”  
     “Therapy, of course.”


End file.
